


Down to the Roots

by Cerberuss



Category: Supernatural, The Sisters Brothers (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Getting Together, M/M, Major Character Injury, SPN Cinema Challenge (Supernatural & Supernatural RPF)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26857918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberuss/pseuds/Cerberuss
Summary: “Well,” Dean says, when they’re walking away from the scene, scrubbing a hand through his hair, ash striped low on his jaw. The heat from the skeletal shell of a barn is still warm against their backs. “That could have gone better.”Sam laughs and thinks that's a pretty good way to summarise the events of their lives thus far.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 9
Kudos: 45





	Down to the Roots

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Round 11 of the[ SPN Cinema ](https://spn-cinema.livejournal.com/) event over at LiveJournal! 
> 
> I did go a little wild. Organising scenes and plot from both The Sisters Brothers movie and The Sisters Brothers book had me feeling like a detective trying to piece together evidence to solve a series of murders. You know [that](https://memegenerator.net/img/images/71382958.jpg) picture? Yeah that one. 
> 
> You don't need to have read or seen The Sisters Brothers to be able to follow!

_“I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.”_

― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

\---

The barn fire burns so brightly it might as well be day. Flames licking sky, turning the moon blood red and ominous through the smoke. 

They had warned them, to be fair. 

It is only Blount they are after, and they have it on the Commodore’s good authority that this is where he would be holed up. 

“Is that him?” Sam asks his brother, who nudges a man's face to the side with the toe of his boot, blood caked where he had been shot between the eyes. 

“No. Fuck.” 

There are bodies strewn across the house, some of which they had dropped themselves, others that had been here for much longer. None of these men match the picture Sam has stored in his back pocket. 

There’s a thud from over their heads, dust falling from the ceiling where someone scrambles around in the attic. 

“Check outside,” Dean says, making a run for the ladder.

There’s a man crawling from a hole in the roof when Sam looks skyward. He’s pulling himself out like a fat worm wriggling itself out of the dirt and Sam almost laughs at the imagery. 

“Blount?” 

The man doesn’t answer, trying to find impossible footing on a ninety degree, thatched roof. Sam watches him slip, roll sideways and fall two stories, a sick crack as he hits the ground two paces from Sam’s feet. 

Dean pokes his head out of the hole where the man had appeared from, asks, “Did you get him?” 

“Uh, yeah.” 

Sam bends down to assess the damage. Blount’s —and this one _is_ Blount— neck has snapped, bone pushing against the constraints of his skin.

“Well,” Dean says, when they’re walking away from the scene, scrubbing a hand through his hair, ash striped low on his jaw. The heat from the skeletal shell of a barn is still warm against their backs. “That could have gone better.” 

Sam laughs and thinks that's a pretty good way to summarise the events of their lives thus far. 

\---

His brother walks out of Oregon City Town Hall with a sheet of paper that he tucks into his pocket and a scowl to his face that Sam knows means his meeting was just as laborious as expected.

Dean spots Sam across the road, heads his direction, dodging carriage traffic. Sam rights himself from his lean against the beam of the newspressers, in the shade of the towering white building that houses the office of the Commodore, who —by the aggravated way Dean is striding away— looks to be their employer, once more. 

Sam descends the stairs, pats his horse’s neck where she is tied, and goes to meet Dean in the thoroughfare. 

“How’d it go?” Sam asks, watching as Dean rips his vest from his shoulders as if it would singe him through his shirt if he was to wear it a second longer. He walks past Sam to their horses and scrunches up the offensive article of clothing, shoves it to the bottom of his saddlebag. 

“Let’s get a drink,” Dean says. 

They find a small saloon at the back end of town, one room and a bar. Dean pays the tender for privacy, the sign flipped to closed. 

Dean has his back against the wall, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, looks irritated as he takes a shot, gestures for the barkeep to leave the bottle, pours himself another. 

“Did the Commodore pay us what we were owed?” Sam asks, worried as to why Dean is so riled. Meetings with the Commodore do always leave his brother in a foul mood. Dean has a hard time exercising civility and struggles to lay words out as well as those better educated. Sam would go in Dean’s stead, except the Commodore will only see his brother, and Sam is tired of trying to wriggle his foot in the door.

“He did, don’t have to worry about that.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“‘nother job.” 

“Did you tell him we were done?” Sam leans forward and over the table, kind of incredulous that Dean could somehow come out of a negotiation regarding the termination of their contract still in employ.

“It’s paying big, Sam.” 

“Did you tell him?” 

“I told him and he wasn’t having it. Said we were the only ones for it.”

“You know he says that to everyone, we hardly matter to him, Dean.”

Dean gives him a look, rolls himself a cigarette. His brother doesn’t need any more of that kind of praise for his already ballooning head. Sam takes a drink. 

The bell overhead chimes as someone stumbles in without reading the sign. Dean, already on his way to drunk, tells the would-be patron to fuck off and Sam smiles in apology at the bartender who shoo’s the man out. 

“We have to go South to find Morris.” 

“The Commodore’s, John Morris?” Sam asks. “Why?”

“He’s after a prospector, named Hermann Kermit Warm.”

“Great, he can find him and kill him and we can go spend our days selling coffee or building houses. Normal jobs, Dean. Remember?”

“Morris is a scout, not a killer,” Dean sighs, exhales smoke and tips his head back against the wooden wall. “Morris finds Warm, he holds him, we come in and finish the job.”

So business as usual, Sam thinks. He turns to face his brother properly, resting his elbow on the table. “Dean.”

“What, Sam?” Dean snaps, already flighty from his talk with the Commodore. It’s been days since they’ve had the money for a room and bath, both tired and dirty from the road; sick of this conversation. “I’m looking out for us.”

“No, you’re looking out for you and your habits.” 

Dean glares at him. “You _know_ no other job pays the same. Are you saying you’re fine to play house while we eat scraps put out for the pigs and bust our asses for two cents to rub together?”

“If it means we’re not at risk of having holes blown through us every day, yes, Dean I would be very happy with that.”

Dean clicks his tongue, finishes his drink, tucks the bottle under his arm and stands to leave. “We can talk about this later.” 

Sam wants to grab him by the shirt and pull him back down to address their situation. This topic isn’t something recently broached and the longer they go on, the longer Sam thinks they will never have any solid foundation to call their own. 

“We’re done,” Dean says to the bartender, and Sam feels like he means it more for him and their conversation. 

There’s men standing outside waiting for their turn to drink. Sam nods to them in thanks, and jogs to catch up to his brother. Dean has been stopped by traffic, the literal front of a house carted by on a huge horse-drawn trolley —porch and all— ready to be hammered together. They are forced to watch it roll by as they wait to cross to their horses. 

Dean makes a point of looking anywhere else. 

\---

Their room is all of two beds and a vanity, but it’s a place to sleep with doors and Sam is grateful for the space.

Sam watches Dean in the mirror as he takes a pair of scissors to his head. His brother is trudging around behind him, putting their belongings in order. It’s a two day ride to where they are to find Morris, and Sam’s hair is long enough that it has started to become a pain. The scissors he borrowed from downstairs are too small for his hands and Sam is struggling to keep his cuts even, fumbling and getting his fingers caught in the handles.

Dean is hungover, as he usually is at this time of morning, his boots heavy on the floor. Recently, he is only ever three things: hungover, functionally drunk, or non-functionally drunk in which Sam means, either passed out on a good day, or -more often than not- loud and slurring and making some kind of fool of himself.

Gratefully (if you can be grateful for any kind of alcoholism) his brother usually sits pretty square in functional, still able to shoot, still able to throw back snarky comments, still Sam’s brother. 

The death of their father had affected them both differently. 

Sam watches Dean in the mirror, running his shaky hands through his hair. He looks stressed, and brandy-sick. 

“Can you come help me with the back?” Sam asks, in order to get Dean to focus on something else. 

Dean looks at him like he had forgotten Sam was there, even over the _snip snip_ of the scissors. He blinks, straightens and walks over to take the metal out of Sam’s hands, pulling it free from his fingers gently. He pushes at his shoulders to get Sam to sit forward again, running a hand through the back of his hair, over the top notch of Sam’s spine in a way that makes his skin prickle into goosebumps all the way down his arms.

“Should crop it,” Dean says, and Sam flinches as his brother holds the now threatening shears all the way to the base of his skull, the cold of them against his skin. Dean’s eyebrow is raised in the mirror.

“Not funny,” Sam warns, flinging a hand around to grab at Dean before he can commit the crime. 

He is slapped away before he can find purchase, Dean’s reflexes still sharp despite the bruises forming under his eyes. “Whatever, Samantha,” he says, and nimbly trims an inch or so as requested. 

Sam watches Dean in the mirror concentrating dutifully on the task at hand. He’s still in a loose shirt, not fully buttoned over his chest, the fabric falling away from his body and Sam trains his eyes to his lap instead, pushing at his nail beds for something to do. Dean’s hands are rough in his hair, shaking out the loose strands as he goes. 

Dean tousles Sam’s hair so it falls back around his face naturally, bends down to Sam’s height, so their faces are side-by-side in the reflection. Judges his handiwork. 

“Truly the fairest maiden in all the land,” his brother says, laughs as he dodges Sam’s rogue elbow. 

Sam watches Dean in the mirror, hungover but smiling, doing his buttons up in the grey light of the window as he peers out the curtains and down to the street below. 

Still his brother. 

\---

“What’d this Herrmann Warm do?” Sam asks that night, eating tepid beans from the can he impatiently removed from the fire too soon. 

Dean shrugs from where he’s laid back on his roll with his arms crossed under his head, chewing on salted meat. “Stole something from the Commodore.” 

“How do so many people take from the Commodore this easily?” 

“They get what’s coming for ‘em,” Dean says, lightly kicking Sam repetitively in the thigh, just to be a pest. “That’s what we’re here for.” 

Sam swats at his boot, but Dean continues. He tosses his can into the coals to blacken and crumple. “And without us? What if we were to steal from the Commodore?” 

“There’d be other men.” 

“We’re better shots. We could build something and settle down comfortably, even a tiny handful of his fortune would do.”

Dean kicks him a little harder at the resurgence of the topic. “The Commodore’s men are expendable. We’d be running for the rest of our lives. It’s not worth it.” 

“Fucking-” Sam grabs his brother’s ankle and holds him in a vice grip, turns to face Dean who smiles at him smarmily. “Quit it.”

“Are you still upset about yesterday?” Dean asks him and Sam lets go of him immediately at the reminder. 

“No.” He turns back to the fire so his brother can’t read the lie on his face.

“You _are_ so,” Dean says, promptly returns hitting him with his boot. “Sam.” 

He doesn’t respond, taking the beating because ignoring Dean is the only thing that has ever really worked in these situations. He feels like a child but he is also actually quite angry. Not interested in conversing with Dean in this mood. 

“Sammy,” Dean kicks him harder, pokes him with his spur. “You’re not smiling, are you? We’re in an argument and you mustn’t smile under any circumstance.” Sam isn’t smiling - isn’t even close to smiling, but then begins to in spite of himself once he turns to shoot Dean a particularly mean spirited glare and finds him grinning maniacally back at him. “No,” his brother continues, “you mustn’t smile when arguing. It’s wrong. You’re meant to stew and hate and remember all the times I was mean to you when we were kids.” 

Sam audibly scoffs and lays back next to his brother, who has stopped kicking him now he has Sam’s attention. 

Dean keeps his boot rested against Sam’s thigh. Their rolls are pulled close in case they need to wake in a hurry and Sam feels anchored by the subtle weight of it, reminding him not of the broader picture, but of his place here, beside his brother. In actuality, whether Sam likes it or not, he’s resolved to follow Dean from job to job, wherever Dean wants to take them, because this is the only type of home Sam has ever known. 

\---

“Winchester. Like the rifle,” Dean says, leaning against the counter. “W-I-N-C-H-E-S-T-E-R.” He resorts to spelling it out for the mail clerk, growing more impatient the longer the feeble man flicks his boney fingers through the inbox. The man stops to look between them both with recognition, as though he’s just put faces to the name. Good to know their reputation carries this far south. Dean smiles maliciously and it says, _yeah,_ those _Winchesters. Better hurry it up, huh?_

“T-there’s nothing here, I would have remembered,” he says, his hands outspread in apology. 

Dean turns back to Sam, sighs and pushes himself up from his lean. 

They had been expecting a letter from Morris, communication of the rendezvous point to collect Warm. Sam chews his lip and hopes no news is good news, knows Dean is thinking the same anxious thoughts. It’s a small town however, and there’s a higher chance of Morris leaving them word further down the road with more time to apprehend the target. 

Myrtle Creek is a two day ride, they should have more luck there. 

There’s still some light left in the afternoon once they conclude their business at the post office and Dean is steering them towards the store on the other side of the street.

The bell chimes overhead when they enter. The interior is crowded with shelves. From boots and hats to pottery and cooking pans. Sam feels a little claustrophobic walking through the aisles and has to duck under hanging leather tack. 

They had run out of coffee three days prior and Dean beelines straight for the shelf when he spots it; makes a little relieved sound that turns the corners of his mouth up.

“Hey, they sell shirts and stuff too,” Sam says, running his hands over the folded fabric laid out on the display table. “Didn’t you put a hole in your favourite red one on the last job?” 

“ _I_ didn’t put a hole in it, thank you very much. The nail sticking out from our dear departed Mr. Blount’s roof did,” Dean says, zigzagging around shelves to join Sam. 

“You should write it a very sternly worded letter.”

“I’ll leave that up to you. I know how you like to flaunt your big boy vocabulary.” 

Sam spears him in the ribs with two fingers at the jest. Dean lets out an _ooft_ , but manages to catch Sam’s hand as he is absconding, squeezes his fingers hard enough to hurt in retaliation, holds them while he browses through the shirts for the correct size. Sam stands there and deals with it because he knows Dean wants him to fight back. The shopkeeper is darting them concerned looks. 

Dean rolls his fingers where he’s got them, so Sam’s knuckles grate over each other and crack painfully, before letting him go completely to raise his shirt of choice up for inspection, the coffee tin tucked under his arm. Sam shakes out the ache and the jitters he gets whenever his brother touches him.

Dean buys a replacement red shirt, a matching white for Sam and the tin of coffee.

Sam buys a toothbrush.

Sam wonders, later, when they’re in their respective beds -Dean, who had gone downstairs to the bar for a nightcap or four, returning back as Sam was between states of consciousness- what kind of store they might own, if they were to go down that road once they were done with this business. Sam knows he would have no real trouble being able to sell whatever they had to to survive, but Dean… He can’t see Dean behind the counter of a tailor, or general store. Can’t see him finding any motivation to sell trivial goods like that, or being able to hold a courteous conversation with the patience one needs to provide good customer service at all. 

A gunsmith, maybe? They both know their way around weapons better than most men, had first hand experience with most kinds. General gun maintenance and handling had been drilled into them far before they needed to know it, and the idea of that knowledge being put towards something more respectable than taking lives fills Sam’s chest with sparks of excitement. Dean could do repairs and custom upgrade orders and Sam could work the counter, manage profits and stock levels. 

Sam says, slurred and half asleep, “Guns, Dean, we should sell guns when this is over.”

He hears Dean laugh as he rolls over to face Sam. “Yeah, Sam?” 

“Yeah, Dean.” 

He can see his brother faintly through the darkness of their room, he’s looking at Sam the way he does when he’s had too much to drink - that is, unabashedly, and not bothering to hide it. Dean says, smiling softly, “We’d be real good at that.” 

“We’d be the _best_ at that,” Sam corrects.

\---

Myrtle Creek is less of a town and more of a swamp. A respite point for prospectors from claims in the area, a hub for travellers passing with the Oregon Trail. Planks of wood criss-cross over the mud, thin enough it requires all Sam’s attention to balance without finding himself ankle deep in muck. He follows Dean, who has his arms raised at his sides as if he was performing at a circus. Sam’s fingers itch with the temptation to push his brother off balance; one small nudge would do it. However, he doesn’t want to imagine the state they would find themselves in at the end of that particular tussle. 

Morris has indeed left them correspondence here. A succinct note that Sam reads out while Dean washes grit off his face at the hotel basin by the open window, water running down his arms and soaking into the cuffs of his new shirt. 

“ _Gentlemen, I have found him. I have managed to make an acquaintance and have arranged to travel with him. If all goes well, we should be in Jacksonville in seven days. I will try to hold him until your arrival and find a secluded place to hand him over. Make haste, John Morris.”_

“Make haste?” Dean asks, incredulously and Sam looks out the window in an attempt to rid himself of the felonious thought of putting his mouth to where water drips and rolls down his brother’s neck. It hardly works. 

“That’s what it says.”

Dean scoffs, wiping his face with a towel. “Pretentious dick.”

“We’ve never even met him.”

“Don’t need to, I can hear the way he has said it perfectly clear and I know that he’s up his own asshole.” Dean throws the damp towel at Sam’s face while he’s preoccupied watching a man shovel hay in the midday heat. 

They had learned from the sickly looking woman behind the hotel’s reception desk, who had ran them clean water to wash, that Morris had passed through a whole four days prior, putting them behind schedule. Dean had asked her if there was a faster way -off the main trail- that might shave a few days from their journey. So Morris won’t have to wait with Warm in shackles too long before they arrive to take the reins. 

Up the mountains; a rougher ride but worth it to get the job over and done with. Dean makes the executive decision to follow this path and Sam doesn’t argue it as he’s still out-of-sorts over his gunsmith revelation a few nights prior. At this stage, he’s prepared to ride over whatever terrain if it means that dream can start becoming one tangible. 

What Sam isn’t prepared for is the truly undeserved misfortune that finds them over those mountains. 

\---

The fog grows heavier the further they travel through the forests, and they ride the best they can, Dean pulling his horse close beside Sam’s so they don’t lose each other with the worsening visibility. Their stirrups clink together.

It’s difficult to tell what time it is with the weather, but they continue until it becomes too dark to see without lanterns to guide them, pushing as much out of the day as possible. 

They struggle to start a fire, the air wet with moisture, most of the surrounding potential tinder soaked through. They manage a small one, after what feels like hours and a whole box of matches. 

Dean lounges back on his elbows and admires his handiwork. He drinks from whatever dark alcohol he’s filled his flask with this time. 

Sam’s anxious with the weather. Pulls his mat to sit next to Dean, tucking his knees to his chest to wade off the cold, ears pricked up for any kind of noise. Dean offers his flask out and Sam bats it away with the back of his hand with more force than was really necessary. He’s frustrated that Dean doesn’t seem to see the need to be on guard. 

“What’s your problem?” Dean asks, taking Sam’s swig for himself. 

“I just don’t think it’s wise to be drinking when we can’t see five feet in front of our faces.”

“Aw, are you scared, Sammy?”

“Fuck you,” Sam says, three seconds away from saying much worse, about to bite his brother’s head off. 

Dean sits up to poke at the fire with a stick, jostling the embers to let it breathe.

The forest is alive with sound, the crackling of the fire ambient amongst the loud chirping of insects and echoing bird calls. They’ve spent countless nights under the stars, and Sam can pretty easily tune out nature when he has to, but there’s something about not having clear vision that’s amplifying everything up to one-hundred, his other senses trying to make up for the loss. 

Sam pulls his blanket out of his bag, drapes it over himself with the intention to try to get some sleep. If Dean’s not worried, then he needn’t be either.

“What was that?” Dean says, just as Sam lays down.

“No funny, Dean.” 

His brother clambers to straighten up, his hand on his gun beside Sam’s head. He’s staring into the fog, over Sam and to their left. “No Sam, I’m serious.” 

Sam throws the blanket off and sits up immediately, eyes wide, trying to scan in the same direction. He can’t hear anything unusual. 

He feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, two seconds before Dean says, “Boo,” right next to his ear and makes Sam jump an inch in the air, tasting his heart in his mouth.

“You _motherfucker_ ,” Sam spits, spinning around to wrestle Dean to the ground. 

“No, no, Sammy. It was a monster. I’m sure of it,” Dean says, laughing breathlessly through the words, trying to keep Sam from getting a grip on him, pushing at his chest and clinging to his arms. 

Sam cracks out an involuntary laugh when Dean gets his fingers into the side of his ribs, where he knows Sam’s been ticklish since he was a kid. Sam brings his knee up and flings it over Dean’s waist so he can hold his hands down on either side with his legs, realises very quickly the issue with this new position and freezes.

Sam’s hovering over the top of his brother, who is flushed from the exertion, breathing heavily and staring up at Sam with huge eyes. He hadn’t got far enough to pin down Dean’s second hand and Sam feels him twist it in the fabric of his shirt at his side, holding on. 

Their faces are less than a foot apart and Sam leans down, possessed with Dean under him. It feels like the natural next step, easy and right, especially when his lips are parted and wet and he-

The fire pops loudly, and makes them both jump, Sam flying off of Dean in an instant, caught out. He stares at Dean, horrified with himself, searching his face for recognition that his brother knew what Sam had been about to do. 

There’s a split second where Sam sees his own expression mirrored back -gone so fast that Sam’s not sure he didn’t imagine it -before Dean laughs loudly and slaps Sam on the leg, hard enough to sting. “Man, you should know better than to fall for that.” 

Sam snatches the flask from where it had landed between them and takes a long, long drink. 

\---

Dean spills half their new tin of coffee on the ground the following morning, the same shade of brown as the earth and Sam has to talk him out of using his hands to sweep it back up, dirt and all. 

The fog has barely let up and it’s a thick soup around them, moisture clinging to their shirts, sticking Sam’s hair to the back of his neck. It’s already drizzling as Dean kicks out the embers of their fire, almost fully extinguished by the weather. Sam goes to put his foot in his boot and jumps when something sharp pricks at his sole. 

A fat spider rolls out when Sam tips his shoe upside-down and pats the bottom, eight legs all curled up around itself, dead. 

Dean pokes it with a stick. 

“See, dude? Your foot stench is so bad it _kills_.” 

“Shut up,” Sam says, hopping on one leg to assess the bottom of his foot. “I think it bit me.” 

Sam doesn’t think much of the bite as they press on. The weather worsens, encroaching black clouds over their heads, dark against the green of the pine when the sky is visible in snippets through the ever-present fog. 

Around noon, or what he thinks to be noon, the sun now completely blotted out by the incoming storm, Sam begins to feel ill. He has to shuck off his jacket, unbutton his shirt lest he boil in his skin, then, five minutes later, drag it back over his shoulders, huge shudders racking from the centre of him.

Dean bites the inside of his lip, keeps shooting him concerned glances. Sam wishes he wouldn’t, it makes him anxious. His thoughts are scrambled, letting his horse follow Dean’s through the trees rather than guiding her himself. It’s an effort to raise his arms, feels as though he’s bruised at the bone, like he’s been beaten and left in the mud overnight. 

The sky finally opens and drenches them immediately, as though it was waiting for Sam to fall sick, to ensure his suffering. Dean pulls out their rain jackets, stopping to hand Sam his, helping him push his arms through the sleeves. If Dean says anything about his condition, Sam can’t hear it over the blood thrumming in his ears, and the rain heavy on the leaves overhead. The jackets do little to keep the rain out as the wind whips up the storm, battering them so violently they have to stay hunched to keep centered on their horses. Sam struggles to stay conscious, sweating through his layers.

They make it another hour or so forward, Dean riding by his side, having taken the reins out of his hands so he can focus solely on keeping upright. Sam’s been tilting towards his brother, subconsciously sideways in periodic lapses of consciousness, Dean’s hand on his shoulder, reseating him. 

Nothing feels completely real. As he struggles to put together the when and where, he thinks maybe he is dying; the ache in his bones and the throbbing behind his eyes is unlike any kind of pain he’s felt before. Sam tries to focus on Dean, his hand on Sam’s thigh. His concern is thick and pressing, and Sam knows if they had the time to stop, Dean would have insisted upon it miles ago. 

“Dean,” Sam thinks he says - tries to say, grabbing at whatever part of his brother as he can to get his attention. 

“You’re alright, Sammy,” Dean says, pulling them to stop so he can turn and push Sam’s drenched hair out of his face. “You weren’t kidding about getting bit, huh?”

Sam tries to look at him, but his eyes veer of their own accord, blurring Dean’s features into one large mass. His head protests at the strain of keeping his eyes open, great bolts of pain through his skull. Sam turns, and unceremoniously empties his stomach over the side of the horse, too out-of-mind to care about where it lands

“Jesus,” Dean says, rubbing at Sam’s back before dismounting to help Sam off, his hands under Sam’s arms like when he was six and Dean was still taller than him, had to be lifted up and over onto a saddle. Sam leans bodily against his brother who struggles to keep him vertical. 

It’s no small feat to get Sam onto the back of Dean’s horse, but they manage it. Sam’s limbs are boneless and weak, he slumps against Dean’s back, his cheek pressed into his brother’s shoulder. Dean says, “We’ll find somewhere to stop,” and Sam can feel the vibration of his voice against his face. 

Dean rides faster now that Sam is secure, his horse on lead. The jostling makes his stomach heave, and Sam groans, resting his forehead in the warm juncture of Dean’s neck to stop himself from throwing up again, his full body weight pressed against Dean’s, chest to back, thigh to thigh. 

Sam feels himself begin to lose consciousness again, less concerned this time, with Dean’s warmth luring him into it. He feels himself slipping sideways as he fades, but Dean grabs at Sam’s hands to wind his arms around his waist. Rests Sam there against his stomach. 

Sam holds on.

\---

Sam doesn’t know how far Dean takes them before they stop. Dean slides him off, an arm hoisted at Sam’s waist to take his weight while he wills his heavy feet to carry him forward. 

There’s a one-room cabin sat between the trees that looks like it’s been a part of the mountain for as long as time. Vines tangled in the wood, twisted through the nails and boards distorted into waves with the weather. Dean knocks on the door, which Sam thinks is strange of him. Surely no one would be living in a place so dilapidated, a days ride from any town. 

But the door swings open and Dean must have seen the chimney smoke because an elderly woman peeps her face through the crack. She has hair grey hair down to the floor, knotted and twig-riddled. Sam’s pretty sure he can spot more growing from her chin. 

Dean is polite, for a change. _Sorry to bother you, ma’am. My brother is ill and I fear he may not make it without shelter from the rain. See we’ve been riding through the storm all day and saw your fire._ Sam watches her through his dizzy vision, wonders if he is actually that bad, whether Dean actually fears for Sam’s life. What a state he must look. 

The woman has black teeth, rotted to the root when she smiles, opens the door wide and disappears inside. 

“Dean,” Sam says, wary. Something is off about the woman. 

“I know.” He hauls Sam up, rearranging his grip. “It’s just one night. I have the Colt.”

Sam feels better with that knowledge. 

The Colt. A Paterson, inscribed with, _non timebo mala,_ “I will fear no evil.” Their father’s gun. Sam does not remember him ever using it to shoot a man, as it was never designed to be turned on one. Sam has taken it with a grain of salt his entire life, John Winchester, a drunk who spoke about monsters and ghosts and carried a revolver that was said to be a death sentence to all of the above. The words of an alcoholic. Their father lived in his head and was bereft with grief after the death of his wife. He said a lot of unbelievable things. 

It’s kept on hand, moreso for the reminder of family, and less for protection. They have a running bet on how much it’s actually worth and it feels inevitable that one day they will find themselves with only the clothes on their back and the Colt tucked into the waistband of Dean’s pants. Perhaps then it might be useful.

However, it’s still a gun that shoots and kills, especially if there’s a chance it can dispose of things not of this world. Sam is happy to have it with them if the woman turns out to be some kind of witch, and their rambling drunken father was right about the supernatural after all. 

They hobble into the small room. There’s a chair and table sat in the corner, a dusty mattress on the floor and not much else. Sam wonders if this cabin even belongs to the woman, or whether she had come across it just as they had. 

Dean puts Sam down in front of the fire and the heat of it warms him instantly, dethawing in pin pricks all over. Dean sits next to him, close enough that Sam can feel the heat of him as well. The woman is threading red and black beads down wire with knobby fingers, not paying them any attention. Dean clears his throat. 

“Do you own this place?” his brother asks. She doesn’t look up, continuing her work like they aren’t in the room. Sam focuses hard on suppressing the shivers that continue to ripple through his muscles.

“Maybe she’s deaf,” Sam whispers to Dean. 

“I am _not_ deaf,” the woman speaks. Sam’s surprised she heard him, he watches her chew down on the wire with her back teeth. Dean shifts and Sam knows he has a hand on the Colt out of sight. “You think I don’t know what kind of men you are?” 

Sam stiffens, feels Dean do the same. He’s terrified with the knowledge that he will not be able to help his brother in a fight, if it came to that. His vision still fuzzy at the edges, the pain in his head only minimally better having sold ground under him. Sam is deathly tired and would not be able to pull his gun in time to help anyone. 

“Yeah? And what is that?” Dean asks, leaning forward to put himself in front of Sam. 

“You are killers, are you not?” The woman sits the beads on the table, the noise of them clinking together paining Sam’s head. 

“How do you figure that? Because we carry guns? I don’t know how long you’ve been up here, lady, but everyone carries guns in this day and age.” 

“Because of the dead men that follow you.” 

Sam’s not entirely sure he’s not unconscious and dreaming. The statement is so bold and there is no way she could know about their profession from the few minutes spent in her company. 

She stands and stretches the beads over the doorway at eye-height, Dean doesn’t take his gaze off of her, his entire body taut and dangerous; if he had fangs, they would be bared. 

“We’re not here to kill you,” Sam says, wishing it came across stronger. Too tired for any of this, wishing desperately to lay back on the floor and sleep the illness away. Sleep without having to worry whether he’ll be staked while doing so. 

“Nor am I,” she says, returning back to her seat, and as if she can feel the exhaustion rolling from him, flicks her hand and gestures to the mattress. “Take the bed.” 

Sam puts his hand on his brother’s forearm in an attempt to calm him, to bring him back from the violent edge he’s teetering on. Dean starts a little when Sam touches him, exhaling quietly and leaning into Sam a little where they’re sat. 

“We’re fine here.” Dean speaks through his teeth. 

Sam lays across the wooden floor, the draft seeping up through the gaps in the boards not cold enough to compete against a well-stoked fire in a tiny room. Dean rearranges himself to sit beside Sam’s head, the angle making him look giant from the floor. Dean barely takes his eyes off the maybe-witch who is occupying herself with something in her rags. His teeth are still firmly clenched, Sam can tell by the jut of his jaw. 

“I’m tired, Dean,” Sam mutters, wanting him to lay down beside him so that they might both be fit for the morning. Dean’s unease is contagious and Sam wants to relax. He would also prefer not to have to bury a body come morning. 

“I know, Sammy.” Dean looks down at him, putting his hand against Sam’s forehead to check his fever before relocating it to his hair, his fingers threaded through. 

Goosebumps prickle up his arms at his brother’s touch. Sam closes his eyes so Dean can’t see what’s hidden there. 

“You can sleep,” Dean says. “I’m here.” 

\---

Sam does so in fits. Hot all at once, cold all at once. He dreams. 

Dean in the prairie, behind their childhood house, long stinging dry grass, swaying waist-high in the moonlight. His brother is alone with an axe and Sam has seen this before. 

There’s a thick sense of dread, everything off, otherworldly. The sky is red behind the huge skeleton trees, empty branches twisted. Sam goes to Dean, hands raised at his sides to let the feather tips of grass tickle the palms of his hands. There is the wet crack like chopping rain-soaked wood, a deep sound that Sam feels reverberate in his gut. 

It’s no straight line, he is turned around multiple times by a force not of his own. Sam thinks, _Dean_ and is realigned every time, his brother’s back, t-shirt clad in the red hue. 

The closer he gets, the worse the uprooting and by the time he makes it to the clearing he’s looking up at his brother from the trodden ground, as if he had crawled through the forest of grass on his hands and knees, and maybe he had, Sam’s hands are wet with blood. 

It coats the ground, brown grass tinged a wet-black, it’s soaked into the pasture of flattened foliage, bent at the roots, like something heavy had rested here for an indefinite amount of time. The trail leads to Dean in the center, Sam doesn’t call to him, not because he can’t but because he knows he shouldn’t. He did not then, and he will not now. 

His brother had told him to stay at the house. 

The wet crack resounds again. Sam watches Dean raise the axe and bring it down to the length of human arm on the block of wood at his feet, snapping it as easy as he would kindling. 

Dean is barefoot, jeans rolled up his calves, hems soaked with blood, trailing in webs down his legs. His brother picks up another bruised, dismembered arm from the pile, splitting it in half and tossing the remains into a shallow grave. 

Sam is at Dean’s side, suddenly, teleported, and this is new. He had never left the safety of the long grass, had watched in sporadic succession between the sway of the bristles.

He pulls on Dean’s arm, his own handprint in the bloodied hairs of his brother’s skin. Sam, on his knees, the same height as he was then, and Dean, as Sam remembers from when he had leant over him a few nights prior. 

Dean has blood flecked up his neck, tiny freckles of crimson over his cheek, over his nose, Sam looks up at him. Framed by the red sky, Dean smiles. 

It’s one so wholly unfitting for the situation, simple and tender-hearted, as though Dean is pleased to see him here, knee deep in the blood of dozens. Dean drops the axe -a damp thud- and turns himself towards Sam’s attention, slides his hands over Sam’s cheeks to cup his face. 

Dean’s palms are just as wet as Sam’s own, catching in his hair as he cradles Sam’s face, thumbs at the corner of his mouth. Sam shivers.

He leans down and kisses him and Sam feels it more concretely than anything else in this fever dream. Nothing chaste, it’s open mouthed and heady; there’s the bite of blood behind the intimate taste of his brother. 

\---

Dean is not at his side when he wakes. 

The fire is embers in its place, the cabin door open on its hinges. It’s spitting outside, the new day still shaking prior’s storm. Sam lays on the floor and stares at the ceiling.

There’s only a dull throb in his skull now. He still feels the bone-deep tiredness that calls him back to sleep but he keeps his eyes open. Sam listens. 

There’s footsteps outside, uneven back and forth pacing in the mud. The sound of insects in the trees, in the walls. It smells of smoke, and a kind of meat that Sam can’t place. 

“She’s gone,” Dean says, walking back through the door, swatting at the beads that the woman had strung up to get in the way. 

Sam groans, sitting up on his hands and knuckling his eyes. Dean’s not wearing a shirt, for some reason. He wonders if he’s still dreaming, whether his brother will pull him up by the collar and kiss him again, let Sam feel him breathing, let him spread his hands wide over his brother’s ribs. 

It always takes a while for those dreams to flush from his system. Being in Dean’s company twenty-four-seven draws it out- both the dreams and the lengths it takes to rid himself of them. It is sacrilege, Sam knows this. He is very far from making peace with this. This is Sam’s fatal flaw. 

He thinks that God might absolve him of his murders, of his drinking, of his lack of attraction towards almost all kinds of women. But the abnormal love he has for his brother? He will burn for it. Sam knows this to be true. 

The smell properly smacks him in the face full force now that he is sitting. The back-of-throat coating smell of burning fat, the singe of burning hair, Sam feels nauseous again. 

“What’s on fire?” 

“Bear,” Dean says, grinning at him from the doorstep.

“ _Bear_?” 

“Jumped me while I was making breakfast a few hours ago, you didn’t hear the shots?” 

Sam wonders what time it is if breakfast was a few hours ago. “No,” he says. He did not hear a thing, let alone wake to it.

Sam gets to his feet slowly, rubbing at his temple. Dean has stepped closer, in case his limbs decide they don’t want to work. 

“You look better today,” Dean says, handing Sam a piece of salted meat and his canteen of water.

“I feel less like dying. Which is an improvement,” Sam specifies. 

“You gotta tap out your boots before sticking your ginormous feet in them, didn’t I teach you that?” Dean says, turning and walking back down the front steps and into the cool drizzle, almost necking himself on the wire of beads, again. He ducks.

Sam sighs, purposely not looking at the expanse of his brother’s back. “Dunno, Dean. You say a lot of stupid shit. Washed out all the important stuff.” 

“That sounds like a problem with your fucked up brain, not my wise teachings.” 

He laughs darkly to himself. That was last on the list of things that worried Sam about his own thoughts. His head is fucked up all right, just not in the way Dean had joked. 

Sam ducks under the beads. Prays that they were left as a blessing and not a curse. 

\---

A dog follows them into Jacksonville, trotting along beside Sam’s horse, like it’s just as curious to see how their stint with Morris is going to pan out. Dean rolls his eyes when Sam says hello and it yips back. 

Morris has a room at the far back of the hotel, as they were told by the manager who released this information after Dean had turned on his charms for her. Leant over the counter, spoke to her in that low voice reserved for places more secluded. Maybe he had promised her something in return. Maybe that’s none of Sam’s business. 

“Go ‘round the back,” Dean orders him. Sam does, with little complaint. He’s still shaking the last of his eight-legged related illness and he’s happy to take a backseat, ready to ambush Warm if he is to make an unprecedented exit. 

Sam stands at the base of the back stairs, looks up at the window that leads to Morris’ room, shifts his feet. He’s not nervous, this particular job has just never sat right. Sam flips the cylinder to his revolver open, checks the chambers are loaded, flips it closed and slides it back into the holster, hand on the grip, ready to draw. 

He does when Morris’ window slides open loudly in the quiet of the back alley, has his finger pressed against the trigger when Dean sticks his head out, realises Sam is about to shoot and pulls himself in again with a surprised _woah,_ quick-smart. Dean whacks the back of his head against the window frame in the process. 

“Christ, Dean. I could have shot you!” Sam exclaims, his heart running a mile a minute on adrenaline, doesn’t want to imagine the outcome if he was the more, shoot first, ask questions later kind of person. 

“They’re not here,” Dean says angrily from the room, his hands flung above his head in annoyance. 

“What? Where are they?” 

His brother leans against the window frame to look down at him. “They left, four days ago.” Dean swears loudly into the street. “Morris left a note. Get up here.” 

“Dear gentlemen, I am sorry to inform you that Hermann Kermit Warm has made a precipitate departure,” Sam reads the note aloud while Dean paces the length of the room, drinking from his flask. “He must have hopped a wagon train and left town. I am going after him as of today. Good luck. Sincerely, John Morris.” 

“Hermann Kermit Warm has made a _precipitate_ departure?” Dean repeats, enunciating. “Who the fuck is he kidding?” 

Sam reads the letter over again. There’s nothing else on the page, just the neat three lines of cursive and John Morris’ signature. No directions, no rendezvous point. This isn’t the actions of the Morris whose reputation was as sturdy as the Winchesters’ own. Dean snatches the paper from Sam’s hands, balls it up and tosses it out the window. 

Sam tries very hard not to feel grateful for the outcome with Dean so obviously frustrated. Presses his tongue into his cheek and thinks about the best way to word the conversation. 

“What do you want to do now?” 

Dean doesn’t answer him, walks out and onto the hotel’s catwalk, leaning against the railing that looks over the reception and meal area, tips his head down to run a hand through his hair. 

“We could call it,” Sam tries again.

“No,” Dean says finally, sighing. “We keep on.” 

Sam leans beside him, turned so his back is against the wood, staring at the empty room. “Think about it, Dean. Jacksonville is nice enough, we could stay here for a bit, save up.” 

“No, Sam, the job isn’t done.” 

“We have no idea where they’ve gone!” 

“They can’t be further than Mayfield. We’ve tracked down harder targets, Sam. This is no different.” 

Sam clenches his teeth. This was supposed to be an easy job, the subject already apprehended. It was never meant to drag out as much as it had. Sam had nearly died for it. The pay at this stage was hardly worth it. An honest two months of work would cover the same amount, with less blood on their hands to show for it. 

Dean’s always been unfairly stubborn, especially when it comes to work and reputation; to taking care of them. Keeping them fed, sheltered, in employ. However, Sam is beginning to think this is bordering on too far. Sam can convince him, usually. Knows how to work his brother in a way only younger siblings can. Dean has been looking after Sam since first learnt how to ask for anything, it’s in his blood. 

He’s having trouble here. This is different. They’re pulling on either side of the rope. One side has Sam and safety, the other has money, power and reputation. Sam isn’t sure how much longer it will last before it frays and snaps, how long before he has to threaten him with separation, if Dean continues down this road.

Sam does not, however, entertain the idea of settling down without his brother.

“They’re so far ahead of us, we were in that forest too long.” 

“If you hadn’t gotten sick…” Dean says, quietly.

“You’re saying this is my fault?” Sam asks, in disbelief. Hurt, a little. “What about you and your drinking? The time you spent wallowing and hungover could have easily cost us the same.” 

Dean straightens up, shoots Sam an aggrieved look, mouth open like he wants to say something worse. “I’m not arguing this with you,” he goes for instead. “The job was never Jacksonville or Myrtle Creek, it was to kill Warm, and we need the money.” 

Dean says it with an air of finality, places his hat back on his head and walks down the stairs. He takes another long shot from his flask, looking back at Sam with glare that reads as, _I’ll drink however much I fucking please._

Sam goes to bed early in a foul mood. They had still bought a shared room, and Sam lays on his back for a long time and watches the dust specs play in the moonlight. 

Dean doesn’t roll in until the sun has started to creep from behind the trees. He smells like whiskey and women. 

Sam pretends to be asleep, listening to Dean pull off his boots and pants and clamber drunkenly into his own bed, the cheap springs squeak in the dark. It’s quiet for a while, just the chirp of outside birds waking each other for the day. Dean hasn’t passed out yet, Sam can tell by his even breathing and the fact that he can feel Dean’s eyes on the side of his face, an uncomfortable itch he gets when he knows his brother is watching him.

It reminds him of a week earlier, when they laid in opposite beds and decided that owning gunsmith was an attainable goal of mutual interest. 

“I’m trying, Sammy,” Dean says, softly. “I just want us to be set. So we never have to work for the Commodore again.”

Sam wants to roll over, to put his back to Dean out of spite. He focuses on keeping his breathing sleep-passable.

“I’m trying.”

\---

There’s no sign of Morris and Warm the entire way to California. Sam’s not surprised in the slightest. The closer they draw to Mayfield, the more impatient Dean gets. This whole job was fucked up from the very beginning, the imminent failure of it hanging low above their heads. Their spirits are collectively low after their argument in Jacksonville and Sam’s very close to spitting out an, _I told you so;_ he saves it for a few days. 

Mayfield is nothing special. They ride into town and pass shops lined on either side, all bearing the Mayfield name on wooden plaques. Mayfield’s General Store, Mayfield’s Carpentry, Mayfield’s Hardware. It’s all one big conceited joke. 

“You think it all belongs to the one person?” Sam asks.

“I dunno but they sure do like the sound of their own name if so.” 

The bar is busy with an afternoon crowd, smoke hanging low in the air, stuffy with the smell of tobacco and sweat. Sam beelines to the bar, gestures for service. 

“I’m looking for a man named Warm,” Sam says to the bartender, getting straight to it. “I think he passed through here a few days ago.” 

“I can’t help you, mister,” the man whispers, setting his work down. 

“What about a tall man, brown hair, around forty?” Dean asks -referring to Morris- from where he has sidled into the small amount of free space beside Sam. Their arms are pressed together, cramped.

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t get mixed up in it.” 

Sam can respect that. Dean on the other hand scoffs very loudly, and is about to say something rude for certain before Sam reels him in with a bruising warning grip around Dean’s wrist. 

“Give us some whiskey,” his brother barks, shaking off Sam’s grip like he’s been burnt, blisters in the shape of Sam’s long fingers. 

“Normal or Mayfield’s?” 

Dean looks at the bartender for a beat, like he can’t believe the gall, and Sam has to smile a little. This whole town wrapped around Mayfield. Whoever they are, their reputation precedes them, and not in any positive way. Not to the Winchesters, at least, whose reputation spreads far across the country, without having to brand it into physical things for people to remember it. 

“Normal. Bottle, two glasses,” Dean says, shortly, and the man busies himself fetching their drinks, tense, fumbling with the clinking cups. Dean has this kind of effect on people. Pretty face hiding vicious bite. Sam will never get used to it. It makes him feel powerful, standing in the wake of Dean’s menace. _Yeah, he’s with me._

There’s a table at the back of the room, under the upstairs balcony and Sam drifts to it automatically. They both sit with their backs to the wall, so they can survey the saloon in comfort. Dean pours them two fingers respectively and Sam finishes his glass in one go because Dean is eyeing him over the rim of his own; a challenge. That’s how the evening is going to be. 

It’s been some time since Sam has gotten stupid-drunk, usually having to stay sober enough to scrape Dean away from where he’s passed out. Sam thinks, not tonight. His patience for Dean is still frayed in a way that whiskey is guaranteed to temporarily fix, and he misses the easiness that is supposed to come with brotherhood.

“Whaddya thinkin’,” Dean says, leaning into the table to refill their glasses.

Sam scans the room. 

It’s mostly prospectors and working girls from what he can tell. The same as most towns this far west. Sam can pick them apart by their mud crusted pants and cheap outfits, a stark comparison to passerbys. They’re pretty close to San Francisco and glints of gold chain wink in the crowd, adorned by men coming from somewhere better. The rest, Sam assumes, are locals. Why anyone would want to establish something in a semi-dictatorship like this boggles him, but at least they have four walls to call their own. 

“I don’t see anyone of import.” 

“Look again, Sammy,” Dean says, already a childish order without adding the name he grew out of the minute he lost his chubby cheeks. Sam presses his tongue to the top of his mouth so he won’t bite. Sam’s trying to repair something tonight. 

So he looks again, above their heads this time, to the balcony that borders the sides of the room. There’s a man in a red waistcoat in the far left corner, leaning against the railing. He’s observing them from up on his perch, swirling dark alcohol in his cut glass. 

“Mayfield,” Sam guesses, and it’s all but confirmed when a woman leans in to his ear to whisper something, side-eyeing them all the while. It’s not subtle.

“The great man himself,” Dean says, then, “look alive,” when Mayfield heads in their direction. Dean finishes his drink. 

Mayfield is shorter from an equal angle, not at all someone Sam would call threatening. He looks like a man that’s never parted with a cigar, deep-set wrinkles and yellow tinged fingers. The kind of person that was born into money, gold pocket watch in his waistcoat probably worth their job twice over. He pulls up a chair, and Dean lights a cigarette. 

“Heard you boys are looking for someone?” Mayfield says, blows cigar smoke over their table. “Usually I’m the one people ask for news in this town.” 

Dean skips the pleasantries. “My brother and I are looking for someone named Hermann Warm.” He gestures to Sam with an outstretched hand. “Probably passed through, what, five-six days ago?” 

Sam nods but says nothing, lets Dean have his way with the conversation. 

A woman walks over, strokes a hand through Mayfields greasy hair. He grabs her by the waist, pulls her in so that she’s pressed up against his side. Mayfield frowns and shakes his head. “Warm? No, I don’t recall. He a friend of yours?” 

Dean smiles, takes a drag of his smoke and exhales it upwards, exposing the length of his throat, the top two buttons of his shirt are undone, the heat of the room making his skin shine with sweat. Sam’s not looking. Dean says, “Something like that.”

“Would I be correct in assuming that you boys are the Winchester brothers?” Mayfield asks blatantly. Sam’s a little surprised by it. Mayfield _would_ be the kind of person with ears all over the state and surrounds, however. Like the Commodore in that regard. Money makes for anxious men. 

“You would be.” Dean shoots Sam a grin, and Sam shoots down the rest of his glass. 

“You two have quite the reputation.” 

“As do you, apparently.” Dean gestures around the room, at the town, at the… everything. If he sounds sarcastic, Mayfield doesn’t pick up on it. 

Mayfield smirks, pleased with himself. He lets the woman at his side loose, grabs her by the arm before she slinks away. “Bring these men a bottle,” he says, turning back to the both of them, “Mayfield’s, on the house. Girls for the both of you too, I’m sure you’ve had a long ride.” 

Dean raises his glass in thanks and Sam smiles politely as Mayfield leaves their table, weaving around chairs and into the throng. 

“Bit desperate, don’t you think?” Sam says.

“Who?” 

“You.” 

“Man, I just scored us free booze and a free lay and you’re _complaining_ about it?” 

Sam frowns, looks elsewhere. 

“You need to lighten up, Sam. I know you don’t want to be here but if you could stop bringing everyone else down that’d be great.” Dean stands to leave, grabbing the bottle from the woman that had fetched it for them, zig-zags his way around the chairs to the sofas in the corner, as far away from Sam as the room permits. 

Sam scrubs a hand over his face, finishing his third - or was it fourth?- glass with a sigh. It always seems to go this way. With Sam never saying the right thing, never the right kind of reckless, never the right kind of appreciative. 

He takes their bottle and drinks by himself on the patio upstairs until his head is foggy and he is inhibitionless enough to go seek out his brother to make amends. 

Dean hasn’t moved from his couch seat, he has girls under each arm, laughing at whatever story Dean is telling them. Sam watches from the bar, leant back on his elbows. The room has become more lively with the day’s end and the sun’s departure. Everyone is on the verge of drunk. Sam included, zoned in on Dean on the other side of the room, peripherals a brown blur and his brother in perfect clarity. 

One of the girls repositions herself, straddling Dean’s lap, her skirt lifted over her knees. Sam watches her move on him, her mouth against his neck, and it’s then that Dean spots Sam through the throng of people. He moves his hands to slide up her thighs, disappearing under her skirt, tilting his head back to give her more space to work with. He stares at Sam.

Sam feels the drunkest he’s been, all at once. Like he’s passed out on the upstairs balcony and this is a dream. His face feels on fire, the cause split between the drink and Dean’s attention. Mostly the latter. His stomach twists.

Sam downs his glass, and is reeled in. 

He hadn’t seen Mayfield from the other side of the room. He’s pouring Dean a drink when Sam arrives and the closer Sam gets the more he realises how drunk Dean actually is. He’s sweating, his eyes bloodshot at the corners, his limbs heavy. He’s resting his head on the back of the couch, still looking at Sam. Sam’s concerned that he’s not completely there. 

Mayfield holds Dean out a glass and Sam snatches it from his hand before Dean can reach to grab it. A flash of anger surges in him. Mayfield has been feeding Dean drinks all night, a constant stream. Sam is unsettled, a small part of him thinks that something is wrong here, that Mayfield is not to be trusted - not with information, and especially not with his brother’s health. Sam should have been down here with him. 

“He can pour his own drink,” Sam says, pawning it off to the girl to the left of Dean, the one that’s not sat over his hips. She shrugs and drinks it in his stead. 

Dean says, “Sam,” with hands still deep in silk fabrics. 

“Thank you for your _hospitality_ ,” Sam says to Mayfield while pushing the girl off of his brother. She looks disappointed, smoothes her hands over her skirts. Sam grabs Dean by the arm, hauling him up to stand. “I think we’ve had enough.” 

“He is the unfriendly one, then?” Mayfield directs his question to Dean, who has an arm around Sam’s shoulder, stumbling a little but not resisting. 

“We take turns,” Dean says, still himself for it to come across smugly. 

Mayfield lets them go, steps out of the way for them to pass. Sam walks them up the stairs and they make their way towards their room.

“Thought you went to sleep,” Dean says, half slurred.

“Wish I had.” They tip sideways, Sam keeping them upright with a hand against the banister and Dean laughs. Sam’s got cotton where his brain is supposed to be and his head spins with the drink. He laughs because Dean laughs and Sam can feel it reverberate where he’s got Dean tucked in at his side. 

“Glad you didn’t.” 

Sam doesn’t know what to say to that. Feels the urge to let Dean go, the need to take his hands off of him. Like his warped feelings for his brother could be absorbed through skin to skin contact and that Dean knows. He knows because Sam still has a hand at his hip when Dean can probably walk just fine. 

“Didya bring the bottle?” Dean asks, alcohol fixated.

“Thought you didn’t like Mayfield’s?” 

“Tastes like piss,” Dean says loudly so everyone on the balcony can hear.

“Yet you drank a whole bottle of it.”

“ _Piss_ ,” Dean stresses, slumps against the side of the hallway while Sam unlocks their room.

Sam pushes him through the doorway and Dean stumbles over his own feet, lands face first onto the bed, body bouncing on the mattress. He groans loudly and lays still. His shirt has come untucked and the force of the fall has caused it to ride up around his waist. Sam can see the dimples at his lower back, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest. 

Sam shakes his head like a dog, like it’ll dislodge something and he’ll be able to go a day without breaking out into a sweat over his brother’s existence. 

He kicks off his shoes, unbuttons his shirt, feeling alcohol flushed and sweaty. Dean hasn’t moved from his collapsed state. 

“Dean,” Sam says, after an image of Dean dying like that flashes through his mind, too drunk to roll himself over, suffocating on feathers. Or vomit, more likely. 

Dean doesn’t respond. Sam leans down to turn him over, and Dean groans as he does, tossing an arm over his eyes at the movement. Only half conscious. 

“Sam,” Dean says, hand fumbling to find Sam’s wrist, keeping him close.

“Yeah.” 

“The other night...” Dean starts, keeping his forearm over his face so Sam can’t read his expression. Can only stare at his mouth. Sam is drunk, he is drunk.

“Which night?”

“When you almost…”

 _Kissed me_ , Sam finishes silently, all the blood in his body rushing to his head, he can feel it in his ears, loud whooshing. Maybe he’ll pass out. 

“Dean,” Sam says because there are no words in the world that are made for situations like this. He can’t know, Sam’s kept himself in line for the better half of his life. He can’t know...

Dean lays there pliantly, his fingers like chain around Sam’s wrist and Sam gets a fucked up, intoxicated thought that maybe Dean’s waiting for him. Maybe that’s what this is. He’s also still at least seventy percent sure that this is something he’ll wake up from, his thoughts cloudy, intangible, dreamlike in fluidity. This won’t have happened tomorrow. 

Sam leans down and kisses his brother.

Dean inhales in surprise, a tiny gasp against Sam’s lips, and Sam goes cold at it, is about to pull back, maybe go find himself a cliff to jump off. He doesn’t get more than two inches before Dean finally removes his arm from his eyes and grabs Sam’s collar, tugs him back in and kisses him hard.

Dean doesn’t kiss like Sam would have thought - _had_ thought. They’re drunk and it’s messy, Dean craning up to meet Sam’s mouth. Sam wants to push Dean further up the bed, straddle his waist like the girl had downstairs but he’s terrified that moving will snap reality back and Dean will sit up and realise that he had just made out with his brother. Sam thinks there would be no repairing damage like that. 

It doesn’t matter, because Dean moves first, using his leverage on Sam’s collar to flip them over, and it’s Dean over his waist and Sam has to remember how to work his lungs.

Dean tips forward, has to catch himself on the headboard.

“You’re drunk,” Sam states, talking feels very wrong. Dean is, however, the drunkest Sam has seen in a long long time and Sam gets a severe pain in his chest at the thought of him regretting this in the morning, of Dean only doing it for Sam’s sake. An awful dynamic would command the rest of their lives. Dean would know too much, would never look at Sam the same, and Sam would have the taste of his brother perpetually stuck under his tongue. They would never be able to recover. 

“ _You’re_ drunk,” Dean replies smartly, grinning above him, his hands moved to splay over Sam’s chest.

“Dean.” 

“Shut up, Sammy,” he says against the underside of Sam’s jaw. He’s unbuttoning Sam’s shirt and Sam does as he’s told because Dean shifts his hips and Sam thinks he might swallow his tongue. 

Dean’s hands are on his skin, and Sam feels goosebumps spread all over, shivers. Dean kisses him to distract from the fact that he’s moved on to unbuttoning his pants.

“Dean,” Sam tries again, grabbing Dean’s wrist before it can move any lower. Dean busies himself kissing at Sam’s ribs instead, open mouthed. “Fuck, Dean, hold on a second.” 

His brother groans, annoyed, shakes Sam’s grip, and says, “I want this, stop whining,” sits up and sheds his shirt over his head, body pulled taught in an upwards stretch where he’s sitting over Sam.

“Even tomorrow?” Sam asks softly, scared of the answer, fingertips on Dean’s stomach as he tosses the clothing to the floor. He’s so warm, his living and breathing, flesh and bone brother, who Sam has looked up to in heroic glory since he was old enough to chase Dean around their fields.

“Especially tomorrow,” Dean says. 

Sam says, “Okay,” and Dean echos, “Okay,” like they’re convincing each other that there is nothing wrong with the way Dean is obviously hard and pressed against Sam, who is equally desperate, if not more so, with how long he’s wanted this.

Dean slides his hand into Sam’s pants and grips him fully. Sam’s guilt subsides and is replaced with fervor; a maddening love for his brother. Nothing that feels this good could be inherently evil, and if it is, Sam thinks they’ve done worse. 

Just the next natural step.

\---

Dean is dead to the world a few hours later, when Sam slips out from under the arm he has thrown across Sam’s chest. 

The room is stuffy, the lamp on the side table still flickering. Sam’s head protests fiercely at being jostled, but he desperately needs water for the rancid taste at the back of his throat that being drunk had caused. 

He hadn’t been able to sleep with Dean pressed against him. Sam had cleaned up with the towel left for them by the washbowl, and Dean -with sleepy limbs- had pulled Sam down, kissed him, and thrown the sheet over them both, with no further discussion.

It’s one thing to fuck around with your brother while you’re both intoxicated. It’s another thing completely to share a bed afterwards, naked and sweating. Sam feels dissociated as he dresses and closes the door quietly behind him.

He heads back to the outside balcony where he had spent most of the night, leans against the railing and looks out over the street, the breeze cooling his sticky skin. Sam closes his eyes and tries very hard not to spiral. 

He’s desperate to know how long they have shared the same warped mindset. Was it a recent development, or a long term investment, like Sam’s has been? Had he thought about it at all before Sam had almost kissed him a few weeks ago? He doesn't think Dean is someone that would analyse this kind of thing, more likely to repress anything uncomfortable, sweep it under the rug to keep his bravado in check.

On the other hand, Sam wonders if this thing in him had blossomed because he had seen it in Dean first. Sam, who has copied his big brother from birth. Followed over the same stepping-stones, learned to write by tracing Dean’s scribbled letters, and loved Dean in the same way Dean loved him.

It’s an overwhelming thought and Sam has to rub at his eyes to clear it from his head before he fixates on it. It shouldn’t matter. Sam should be pleased, should be over the moon. Which is not to say he isn’t those things, he’s just struggling to come to terms with the fact that this is real. Resigned to keeping his depravity to run-away thoughts and subconscious dreams behind lock and key. He feels like a dam has burst and all the soft parts of him are spilling out. He had his hands on Dean. He was allowed to put his hands on Dean. 

He might get to do it again. 

It’s the beginning of something, and he had never planned for this. Why would he have? 

Sam pulls himself together when the sound of men approaching the saloon forces himself out of his head. 

Three of them, heads bowed and hats covering their faces. He had seen them earlier downstairs, sitting with Mayfield, and the only thing that Sam thought strange about it was the fact that they did not have alcohol in their hands. 

Sam goes back inside with the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He does not feel safe here, suddenly. Already uncomfortable with Mayfield’s earlier hospitality, the amount of alcohol he had poured Dean… The fact that he had known who they were. That he knew their business with Warm.

Sam pushes past the patrons continuing to waste the night away, the bar downstairs still bustling with customers, dancing and laughing. He hopes he isn’t recognised. 

Dean is still where Sam left him when he returns, rolled over with his back stretched in the orange lamplight, hands shoved up under the pillow, the sheet draped low over his waist. Sam takes a second that they do not really have to watch his chest rise and fall with sleep. His brother, Sam’s brother, the boy that gave him piggybacks and taught him how to read, lays naked and drunk and marked from Sam’s mouth. 

Sam swallows and collects himself. 

“Dean,” he says urgently, throwing him his shirt from the floor. “Get up, we gotta go.” 

Dean jumps at being woken so roughly, rolls over to sit and hold his head. “Wh-” 

“Mayfield’s men, downstairs.” 

Sam straps his holster back to his hips, collects the rest of Dean’s clothing off the ground and dumps them on the bed, “ _Now_ , Dean.” 

“This _fucking_ town.”

“Are you sober enough to shoot?” Sam asks, watching as Dean trips over his feet trying to step into his pants.

“No, not really.” 

Sam bites his lip nervously, pulls back the curtain to survey the street. Sam could probably take the three men downstairs just fine, but if there are any outside waiting to ambush them, Sam would be overrun without Dean’s help. The night's events have rattled him as is, his head is still cloudy from the whiskey. Sam’s concerned he’s not going to be able to take them at his own, one-hundred percent.

The back stairs are clear as they make their escape to the horses. Sam thinks they’re being reasonably quiet but he is still tipsy and Dean is in an even worse state. Needs another few hours sleep for it to wear off. He’s pale-white, struggling with the decline, Sam offers his arm and Dean grips it weakly.

“Don’t puke on me.” 

Dean groans sadly. 

Sam resaddles their horses, fumbling with the girth, his hands sweaty, slipping before he can get the buckle in. 

He side-steps around Dean who is doing even worse, has the bridle tangled and is trying his best to get it over his horse’s head. Sam takes it out of his hands and goes to fetch Dean’s saddle, sitting it over his horse before Dean says, “Sam.” 

Six men stand at the entrance of the stable, hands on the pistols at their hips. Sam raises his hands. Moves to stand back next to his brother, who is leaning heavily on his horse.

“Look, we can work this out, how much is Mayfield paying you?” Sam asks, walks forward and places himself in front of Dean.

“They don’t want money, Sam.”

Sam purses his lips, not wanting Dean to run his drunk mouth in such a precarious situation, especially when he doesn’t have his wits about him. 

“It’s about reputation. Being the people that kill the Winchesters,” his brother continues, walking forward to put himself back in the firing line, back beside Sam. 

“Dean,” Sam says, hating those words from Dean’s mouth. It feels like a sentence, jinxing what is to come. Sam thinks, of course. Of course they would die on the night Sam finally got what he wanted. God sent to punish them for their sins.

Dean holds Sam’s wrist, two fingers of pressure on his pulse point. They draw at the same time, in sync. 

They take out the front two before the men have the time to react, and before they realise what’s happened, Sam and Dean have ducked behind the wood of the stalls on either side. Five shots left, he shouldn’t need to reload. 

Mayfield’s men also scatter. Sam picks one off as he sticks his head out from behind a post. Four. The horses rear and kick, spooked at the noise.

Sam checks for Dean out of habit. Spots him to his left, crouched, focused, not looking at all under the weather as he had seconds earlier. He takes out the fourth and fifth without ducking behind cover and Sam feels his pulse quicken at the sight, the hair on his arms rise. Dean, still a better shot drugged than six men sober. Sam’s seen him like this countless times, clear minded and fearless, but it’s something he’ll never get used to.

They take out the last two embarrassingly easily. Sam shuffles around and shoots the second at point blank range. The last man runs, and they both follow him out the barn doors. Dean shoots him in the street, his body collapsing face-first in the mud. 

Sam breathes hard with the adrenaline, turns to Dean once it’s quiet, his ears ringing. Dean tips his empty shells out, clinking musically against the ground. He grins at Sam. 

Sam wants to get his hands on him again, lick the sweat from Dean’s neck, fit his thumbs under his jaw, push his head back. Insatiable and obsessed with his brother. It hits him square in the chest, like he had been the one shot, he’s left breathless from it. 

“I think we ought to pay Mayfield a visit,” Dean says, and then throws up violently into the shrubbery.

\---

Dean sits opposite Mayfield in his office, as if they were about to propose business except for the fact that Mayfield bleeds heavily from the hairline from where Sam had hit him hard against his desk. 

Sam has a gun pointed at Mayfields head, too, but that’s a given, really. 

“Warm needed an investor for some prospecting scheme. It sounded ridiculous, I couldn’t understand it,” Mayfield explains, looking frantic and wide eyed. “But I saw Morris... and thought if the Commodore was interested, it might be worthwhile.” 

“Did Morris leave a letter for us?” Dean asks.

“No. He was just traveling with Warm.” 

“With?” Sam asks, confused. 

“Yes.”

Dean glances up at Sam with a _‘well what do you know’_ kind of disbelief. 

Mayfield looks up at Sam, cowers away from where Sam has his gun still pointed, now aimed right in the centre of his head. Sam says, “Why did you want to kill us?” 

Dean opens a music box on Mayfields desk, an off-key tune chiming from it, unfitting for the situation. Dean is terrifying, and Sam can’t help but smirk. Mayfield flinches at the sight of it. 

“You two are insane.” 

“Answer the question,” Dean snaps.

Mayfield jumps at Dean’s tone, swallows. “When I realised Warm had something of value, I sent men after him. I couldn’t have you interfere.”

“What exactly was Warm’s scheme?” 

“I don’t know, something about a formula that lights up gold. No panning, no mining, you just pick it from the river.” 

“That’s impossible,” Dean says.

Mayfield says, shrugging shakily, “That’s all I know.” 

The music-box tune chimes its last few notes and Dean lets it play out before speaking again. “Well, you’re not going to like what comes next.” Dean says, “Open your safe.” 

Mayfield looks between Sam and Dean like he can’t believe this is happening. Like he knew of their reputation but did not think past the glamour of it. Never thought about the consequences, or that he would never have to face them personally. Sam’s fingers itch to hit him over the head again, he restrains himself, if only because they need his head intact for the whereabouts of the keys.

Sam does not feel guilty for this. This is justice. This is what happens to men that seek to harm Sam’s brother. This is how the world works. 

Mayfield says, shaking his head in tiny panicked movements, “No,” and then, “never.”

Dean smiles, and Sam pulls the trigger. 

The sun is brightening the sky when they emerge out the front door this time, blood on their soles from where Mayfield had bled in a puddle on the floor of his parlor. A crowd has gathered in front of the saloon. The whole town, probably. Sam adjusts the heavy bag over his shoulder. 

They stare at Sam and Dean, like they’re expecting a speech, a reason behind the midnight gunshots. The whispering is loud. 

“I think you should say something,” Dean says, bumping into his shoulder. 

Sam stammers, struggles to come up with anything poignant. “Uh, Mayfield is dead.” 

“You don’t have anything more positive to say?” Dean says, loudly and performative so the throng of people can hear; Dean’s drunk sits back in the functional state. They mount their prepared horses, tied to the front of the building prior to confronting Mayfield. 

“My brother and I have good news for you!” Dean starts, kicking his horse to move, yells as they make their exit, “You can change the name of your fucking town!” 

Dean whoops loudly down the main street, their horses kicking up dirt with their speed, saddlebags jangling with Mayfield’s stolen gold. Sam follows him, chases him down like he’s always done. 

Dean turns to Sam and beams, cheeks flushed with glee. It’s the happiest Sam has ever seen him. 

\---

They keep heading west, as west as the land will allow because Dean’s all jacked up on the thrill of Mayfield’s and Sam can’t bring himself to cut that short. Dean keeps shooting Sam looks, talking about stupid shit, easy stuff.

“What do you think they’re gonna do with the town now that Mayfield’s not there?”

“Fuck, we shoulda burnt it down, Sammy,” Dean says, spreading his arms out at either side, evangelically, his body rocking with the sway of his horse, shirt still buttoned down to mid-chest from last night. “Imagine the sight.”

“You couldn’t even walk down a flight of stairs, what makes you think you’d be able to manage something like that.”

“That’s what you’re here for,” Dean says, swinging sideways to punch Sam in the arm. He leans away before it can connect. “To do all my evil-bidding.” 

Sam thinks, _you have no idea._ He urges his horse to a higher gait, Dean’s mood rubbing off on him. He wants to feel the wind sting at his face, rip at his clothes, wants to feel the thunder of hooves through his body. Dean right behind him, racing him to the sandy hill in the distance. 

They hit the most western point when the sun is at its highest. Dirt giving way to sand and then to water. They halt on the peak of the dune, breathing heavily with the ride. The beach is spread out for them. Sam has never seen so much water in his life, is blinded by the white of the sand. 

Dean starts down the hill, his horse’s hooves dug deep in the ground with every tentative step. Sam can’t take his eyes off the horizon.

They follow the water a while, letting their horses walk through the waves. They pass washed up remnants of other people’s lives. Wooden tables and crates full of sodden clothes, boots and hats, even a whole dresser cabinet. The ocean giving back what it took from ship-wrecks, from other worlds. Sam feels so fantastically small. 

When the sun starts to set, bright orange reflected in the water, Sam dismounts, tosses his boots into the sand, rolls his pants up his calves and wades into the pink waves. He watches the sand push and pull around his feet. The water is warmer than he expected for a body so endless.

He jumps when Dean runs straight past him, grabs Sam’s wrist as he goes, the momentum pulling him forward, wrenching his feet from where the sand has given way and wrapped them back up. Water splashes up and soaks Sam’s clothes. It doesn’t matter for much longer anyway because Dean keeps dragging him deeper and deeper until Sam can only just touch the ground on his toes and Dean not at all, his shirt billowing out around him as he keeps himself afloat. 

Dean ducks under the water to wet his face, leaving tiny pink sunset-droplets over his nose when he resurfaces. His hair is stuck to his forehead and he looks at Sam with eyes a brilliant green.

Sam reels him in by the shirt and kisses him. 

It’s better sober. He’s able to fully comprehend the way Dean kisses him back, to feel Dean’s teeth against his lips, the smallest brushes of his tongue. He catalogues it, holds it solidly in his head this time. This is what it’s like to kiss his brother. 

Dean wipes Sam’s wet hair from his face, thumbs against his cheeks, and dunks Sam’s head underwater in true brotherly fashion.

They dry out, laid back on their mats on the beach, shirts hung out over their saddles. Dean smokes a cigarette. His freckles are stark against his pale skin, prominent under the sun. Sam rolls onto his side so he can watch, counts the marks on Dean’s torso and commits them to memory, trying to remember the cause of each scar.

“How far ahead do you think Mayfield’s men got?” Sam asks.

“If they’re as competent as the last lot then I’d say we’re about even.” 

Sam chews the inside of his lip. There’s no reason for them to continue the job now that they have a sufficient enough haul from Mayfield to keep them going a while. Sam’s nervous to bring it up, and doesn't want to ruin Dean’s mood.

“I don’t blame Morris for falling in with Warm. If Warm really does have a formula like that…” Sam trails off.

“Makes sense why the Commodore’d want it.” Dean drums his fingers to a beat on his chest, eyes closed. 

“Dean -” 

His brother opens one eye and turns his head to Sam.

“What are we doing?” 

Dean takes a drag of his smoke, exhales it in a sigh, dispersing above their heads. 

“Gonna take you to San Francisco.” 

“What?” 

“The city, Sammy!” Dean says, stubbing his cigarette out in the sand. He rolls over and props his head up on his elbow beside Sam, knuckles running across Sam’s side. “Unload a little of this cash, huh?” 

“You’re not worried about the job?” 

“We can ask around a little there, they’ll have a claims office, we can find out where they’ve set up. Piece of cake.” 

Sam grabs Dean’s hand to get him to stop his movements, it’s making him ticklish, skin breaking out in goosebumps, making him cold. Dean settles himself over Sam instead, running his mouth in one long line down Sam’s chest, down his belly, kisses him just above the place his pants sit. 

“You’ve got it all sorted then?” Sam asks, brushing fingers through Dean’s hair, dislodging sand and feeling it scatter over his skin. 

“As always.”

Sam makes an embarrassing noise when Dean gets his mouth on him, head tipped back to the sky, not able to look at his brother from an angle like that, for fear it would tip him over completely, embarrassingly.

Birds fly in slow circles over the beach. Seagulls, not ravens, and Sam doesn’t think much of anything. 

\---

They get lost the moment they step foot in San Francisco. Turned around by the endless rows of buildings, sky high and built with concrete and bricks. People move from place to place in droves, the narrow streets lined with carriages and horses, Sam bumps into and apologises to at least five men in the first ten minutes. Dean almost gets hit by the cable car. They stand on the corner and watch it shudder by, bell chiming relentlessly, people jumping on and off as they please. 

They stand out in their shabby clothing. Men are dressed in waistcoats and women in tight fitting, boned dresses. Hats that probably cost more than any amount the Commodore has paid them. There’s so much going on, so many people with their own agendas, their own lives and struggles. It makes Sam’s head hurt to think about. 

Sam wonders how anyone sleeps - or if anyone actually does. Street lamps on all night, establishments open just about twenty-four-seven. Everything is loud. 

He almost runs straight into Dean halfway up the widest street. His brother has stopped to stare up at what could be the largest building in the city. Trying to find the top gives him vertigo. It’s easily six floors, huge double doors framed by detailed pillars on either side of the carpeted stairs. All intricate glasswork and delicate details carved from stone. There’s a fountain in the side courtyard. It’s kind of obscene.

“What is it?” Sam asks, standing beside Dean, both gaping like fools.

“A hotel,” Dean says, and then, “Let’s stay here.” 

Sam’s about to say _‘are you joking?’_ but Dean is already striding on in. 

Their room has its own washroom, complete with clawfoot bath and flushing water closet. Red drapes, gold trimmings, their own small balcony. It’s excessive, and the smell of the roses on the vanity makes Sam’s nose itch. 

Dean booked them one bed and the concierge didn’t even look at them twice for it, perhaps he had assumed it was all they could afford. Everyone is in a constant state of go-go-go, and no one pays them any real mind. The concierge tips his hat to them and leaves. 

“This is ridiculous, Dean.” 

“I think the sheets are _silk_ ,” he replies, collapsed on the bed, buried under an unnecessary amount of pillows. 

They go downstairs for dinner, but not before Sam makes them buy new shirts and clean pants so they don’t look like they’ve rolled in from the gutter as much. Dean wears his new vest out of the changing room, red and black with embossed flor de lis in the fabric. Sam wasn’t interested in anything flashy, glass buttons and modest cuff-links enough, but Dean picks him out a necktie that matches the colour and pattern of his vest and Sam can hardly say no to that. He tucks it under his collar, leaves it casual and loose. 

Dean in red has always made him feel particularly compromised. No different now, as they sit opposite each other at dinner. Sam looks at him around the handful of glasses they’re collecting on the tablecloth. The whiskey that had filled them is nothing like Sam has ever tasted before, and he thinks he’ll never be able to go back to bottom shelf bottles again. 

Dean kicks Sam’s foot under the table in time with the rhythm of the band playing atmospheric music from the far corner. He’s pretending to be a pest, but it’s touching for the sake of touching. Sam traps Dean’s boot between his own and they eat their meal like that. Meats heavy and rich and alcohol to match. 

“We’ll stop by the claims office in the morning, see if we can narrow down a location.” 

Sam looks to the side, takes a drink. The restaurant seats at least sixty people, and all tables are full. The chime of cutlery and china loud over the band. 

“What are we going to do when we find him, Dean,” Sam starts, holding his breath a little. 

“Finish the job, Sam.” 

“Why?” 

“I thought we were over this,” Dean sighs, removes his foot from where Sam had been holding it. The loss of it feels significant. 

“Think about it for a second, we have enough money from what we made in Mayfield to last us months, even with this excessive spending. We don’t need the Commodore’s money.” 

“We’re almost there, Sam. Imagine what we have now _plus_ what we’ve been promised by the Commodore.” 

Sam clenches his jaw. The waiter comes and takes their plates, refills their glasses.

“It just feels wrong, Dean. By the sounds of it, Warm hasn’t done anything to warrant being murdered.” 

“You’re going soft now? Since when does that matter?” 

“Since we’re no longer desperate for money to feed ourselves.”

Dean runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “You want to sit it out, that’s fine. You can wait here and I’ll finish it,” he says, avoiding eye contact. 

“That’s not what I want,” Sam says quickly, it’s not an option, and Dean knows that. 

“Then what _do_ you want? ”

“I-” Sam starts, but Dean cuts him off. 

“We have to tie up the loose ends, Sam. The Commodore won’t have it any other way.” He speaks in a harsh whisper, anxiously eyeing around the room to check that they’re not causing a scene. 

Sam says, clenching his fists under the table, “So we tell him the truth, that Morris fell in with Warm and that they ran off together.” He hates the spin of this conversation. Upset that Dean won’t budge, he feels like a child, his opinion not wanted, not valued. It hurts coming from his brother. Dean’s throwing out knives mere hours after he had been kissing at Sam’s scars.

“He won’t accept that, and we wouldn’t get our cut.” Dean finishes the rest of his glass in two large gulps. “If you want to play house so bad you need to understand the sacrifice it takes to earn it.”

Sam stands abruptly. The movement causes the china to rattle, a glass falls to the floor and rolls table. Half the restaurant now has now paused mid bite to watch the commotion. He can’t do this. The rich food and rich atmosphere makes him nauseous suddenly, head spinning a little with how fast he had moved. This is not them, they don’t belong here.

“You want to know what I think, Dean? I think you’re a fucking coward. I think you’re scared to build towards anything that could be taken from you. You’ve always enjoyed this job just a little too much, I think you just want the excuse to blow someone’s head off.” A woman gasps from somewhere to Sam’s left. Dean scowls with fire behind his eyes, burns holes through Sam.

Sam pulls the necktie from his shirt, tosses it onto the table and walks out. 

He wanders aimlessly for an uncertain amount of time. The streets are thinning out with the night, yet are somehow still busy enough that he has to watch where he is walking. It’s a struggle when he’s so in his own head, and it does well to infuriate him more. This city of endless brick and perpetual light. He’ll be happy to never return here. 

Sam runs out of road at the harbour. Ships docked against the port, masts standing tall like a forest of dead trees, rigging for branches, leaves stripped bare. Sam breathes in and doesn’t smell the salt of the ocean like he had at the beach. Here the air smells distinctively of fish and smoke. 

Dean finds him when the moon is well settled in the sky. Sam doesn’t have to turn to know it’s him, he’d expected it, eventually. Dean sits beside him on the bench and says nothing for a long while. They watch the slow rocking of the ships. 

“You’re right,” Dean says quietly, eventually. “It does scare me.” 

Sam glances at his brother. He’s staring out into the jungle of rigging. 

“After Mom, after Dad, after all the bad luck we’ve ever had. Misfortune is in our blood, Sammy.” 

“You can’t know that.” 

Dean smiles sadly, fiddles with the ring on his finger. 

“What are we doing, Dean?” Sam asks him again.

Dean doesn’t reply instantly, the waves crashing against the wood of the port only just audible over the sound of the city at their backs. “What do you think we should do?” 

Sam sighs, rubs at the back of his neck. There has to be a way to compromise. 

“We go find Warm. We offer them help…” 

Dean looks skeptical but doesn’t interrupt as he almost certainly would have if he wasn’t walking on thin ice. 

“We know Mayfield’s men are after them,” Sam continues, putting the plan together as he goes. “Our protection for a stake in their claim.” 

Dean hums. “And we tell the Commodore the truth?”

“And we tell the Commodore the truth.” Sam nods. “His money won't matter if the rumours about Warm’s formula are true.”

Dean hums. “You’ve always been pretty smart.”

Sam shifts closer to Dean, so that there’s no space between them, his arm pressed up against the warmth of Dean’s side. 

“If you don’t want to stay in one place after this is done, we don’t have to,” Sam says, reaching out to take his necktie back from where Dean has wrapped it around his wrist, warm from how he’s held it against himself. He lets his fingers linger on Dean’s arm. “I just - I just want you, and me. And I want us to be safe.”

“Me too, always.”

Dean repeats himself later, while Sam’s got his mouth open on his brother’s throat. Except it’s in answer to a question that Sam doesn't ask. Dean is on his back with his dick pressing up between his belly and Sam’s own hard length. Sam is panting, says muffled against Dean’s skin, “I don’t remember a time where I didn’t want this.”

\---

There is nothing under Warm’s name at the claims office. Dean looks at him a beat, his eyebrows pinched together before he turns back to the counter and asks for John Morris instead. 

American River, Folsom Lake.

There’s prospectors in the hills all the way there. Hands deep in the tributaries, crouched and panning on the banks, the rustling of rock and grit loud as they travel by. Long wooden troughs of flowing water lined the bigger claims, so multiple men could sift through rock at a time. The whole area has been bought out by people with a strong faith in their own luck.

The formula that Mayfield had talked about would bypass the need for any kind of laborious work. Sam wants to know what kind of man Warm is to come up with something so fantastical, hopes that it’s not just talk because he wants to see it work with his own eyes. He’s having trouble comprehending how such a thing could be possible. 

They find Mayfield’s men before they find the claim. 

The cliffs are rocky here, miles of canyons with steep river drops. Their horses trip over loose rock and Sam watches the stones tumble over the side and break apart before hitting the water below. They hear shots from below. 

Mayfield’s men surround a small river-bend camp. Two others sit behind a rock looking out of place as they frantically reload. Sam recognises Morris from the Commodore’s hallways. Both men struggle to find their targets, shootouts not in their job description. It’s kind of embarrassing to watch.

“Look at that. Perfect timing,” Dean says, sliding to the ground, pulling out his rifle and urging his horse back away from the edge of the cliff. “Get the farthest two, I’ve got these ones.” 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sam says. He continues onwards down the hill, does a wide arc before leaving his horse, crouching forward on foot with gun in hand. 

They don’t see him approach, moving in from behind, amongst the trees. There’s a rifle shot from the way he had come, loud and reverberating around the cliffs. Sam holds his breath for the second. Both men have their backs to him, peering out from cover to shoot at Morris and Warm on the other side of the river. 

Dean’s second is just as thunderous. 

While they try to trace the source of the sound, Sam shoots down the first quick. The second man jumps at the blast, looks at his companion who is now bleeding into the dirt, raises his gun in retaliation. He’s about to shoot, but Sam’s faster, aiming for his hand, ripping his revolver straight from it. It lands with a thud on the ground at his feet. The man cries out, holding his torn hand to his chest, bleeding heavily into his shirt. 

“Very sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Sam says, “but, Mayfield is dead, and this was all for naught,” and then shoots him in the head. 

Sam thinks, maybe he shouldn’t have been so hard on Dean in San Francisco, when he gets the same kind of thrum through his veins pulling the trigger as his brother does. It’s in the upbringing, it’s in the company, it’s the kickback and the calm in the aftermath. He breathes deeply.

Sam leaves cover with his gun holstered and his hands raised, ready to converse in good faith. 

Morris trains his gun on Sam immediately, his eyes wild with nerves. Sam thinks he looks different up close. Rugged with living outdoors, not at all the put together man that worked directly under the Commodore. 

“I knew you’d come,” Morris says. “Where is your brother?” 

“We’re not here for the reason you think,” Sam says first thing, glancing to check on Dean, who is no longer on the cliff. It makes him terribly uneasy. 

Sam won’t draw on him, despite the fact that he’s an arms length away and striding closer. 

“On your knees,” Morris orders, and Sam goes, pants wet, kneeling at the shore of the shallow river. 

“John,” a voice says, and Morris turns and gives Sam a view of Dean, who has a knife to the small, dark skinned man’s throat. It must be Warm. This is not how Sam had pictured this going down, although it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In hindsight, there really was no reason for Morris and Warm to trust them outright. 

“Let him go,” Dean growls, hauling Warm backwards, almost off his feet completely. Warm kicks up dust.

Morris puts the cold barrel of his revolver to Sam’s head in retaliation. “You first.” 

“We’re not with the Commodore anymore!” Sam blurts out before the situation can sour further and Dean can take Warm’s head off. Sam’s not all that worried about Morris, he’s worried about his brother acting rash at the slightest twitch of Morris’ finger. 

He snaps his head down to look at Sam, who raises his arms higher in sincerity, palms spread wide, pleading truth. Morris runs a free hand through his hair in exasperation, daring a look back to check on Warm in concern, and Sam thinks that’s interesting. 

How far had their relationship come to end up here? Morris, who had been originally hired to apprehend Warm in preparation for his death, now worried for his safety. 

Eventually, Morris lowers his weapon and Sam calls Dean off Warm. Dean pushes him forward and away with a little too much force for a man with such small stature, he stumbles but remains upright. 

“Then please do tell,” Morris says, through clenched teeth, “why _are_ you here?”

Sam says, “We have a proposition to offer.” 

\---

It is nightfall by the time they are able to sit down and discuss business. They had disposed of Mayfield’s men for Warm and Morris as a show of their good intentions. Dean had put a hand on the back of Sam’s neck once he was free from gunpoint, and seemed hesitant to let him go. 

Sam watches Warm on the other side of the fire, writing in a notebook. Morris stands over his shoulder, looking unhappy with the turn of events. 

“So if we all agree, you two will keep half of what you pull from the river,” Warm says, “In exchange for our future protection and for your aid this afternoon.” 

“Fine with me,” Sam agrees, both him and Warm looking at Dean for confirmation. 

Dean is smoking from his position as far from John Morris as possible, he shrugs, nods at Sam and says, “I’m with him.” 

“Excellent.” Warm smiles. “John?” 

“Don’t ask my opinion, you know I don’t agree with what is going on here.” He walks to where a chair has been sat out beside the open tent flap, pulls his boot off and scratches at his shins rigorously. “I’m still in of course, but I remain on my guard.”

Dean scoffs loudly. 

“Gentlemen,” Warm says, trying to settle the conflict before it can turn ugly. 

Sam understands very quickly how Morris had come to fall in beside Warm. Clearly the businessman of the two, intelligent with this bargaining and word choice. He has a voice that demands attention, not in any way loud -almost gentle enough to be called soft-spoken, even- it's in the way he holds himself, constructs sentences. Sam feels the pull himself. 

Morris stands, his pants pushed up his legs and Sam notices the blisters, wrapping the lower half of them. Purple and red and horrid looking. “I’m going to sleep.” 

“Your legs still hurt?” Warm asks, concerned, he goes to reach out as Morris walks by, but reigns himself in at the last second. 

Morris says, “I’m alright. Goodnight Herrmann,” and then disappears into the second tent. 

There’s a silence around the fire. Sam can feel Dean relax with Morris’ departure, slouching where he’s propped up against a rock. Sam sighs, hopes this doesn’t set precedent for the days to come. 

Sam pulls the leaves of a branch laying on the ground, tosses them one by one in the fire. Warm closes his notes after a while, tucking the book into the folds of his shirt. He begins to scratch his own legs and Sam sees he is suffering from the same blistering rash as Morris.

Warm notices them both watching him itch, Dean with an impassive expression, Sam with concern. 

“It’s the formula, its, uh, very caustic in its purest form,” Warm says, looking disappointed with himself. “I thought diluting it would help, but it didn’t. We’ll have to grease up our skins beforehand.”

“You’ve used it already?” Dean asks.

“Two days ago.” 

Sam jumps in, anxious to know. “Did it work?” 

“Better than I had ever imagined,” Warm says, smiles at the both of them. 

Sam turns to his brother, who grins at him, optimistic and exuding hope. 

\---

The claim needs to be prepared before they can prospect. They spend the next few days cutting trees for wood, moving stones and preparing a dam in the bend of the river so that the water flow is halted enough to see the gold at the bottom when the time comes. It’s hard work for a result that will only last minutes. 

They are given their own tent, Morris and Warm sharing one themselves, far enough away that both parties can speak freely at night without being overheard. Sam and Dean stack both cots to one side and lay out their mats on the ground instead, so they can sleep with skin touching, a necessity, recently. 

On their second night, Dean puts himself between Sam’s legs, arches over to kiss at his stomach while he presses two fingers into Sam. The muscles in Sam’s stomach flutter under Dean’s mouth, and Dean has to shush him, stop the noises that slip from Sam with his lips, kisses him so that he lets out only tiny grunts with exhales. He hasn’t ever thought of himself as loud until he is forced to be quiet. Once fingers are replaced with something larger, however, Dean has to slap a hand over Sam’s mouth completely. 

Sam laughs around it, slobbers on his brother’s hand on purpose, Dean recoiling in disgust despite the fact that Dean is quite literally inside of him. He shoots Sam a disapproving look, wipes his hand on Sam’s chest in big long sweeps, before rocking forward sharply and reducing Sam back to an embarrassing state.

It’s fairly obvious to Sam that Morris and Warm’s relationship pushes what would be considered a normal business partnership - or even friendship for that matter. Sam has yet to hear them call each other by their last name. John and Herrmann exclusively. Morris tends to keep Warm in close company and Sam notices the signs because he sees the same from Dean. 

Hardwork and long days, sitting exhausted around the fire at night brings the two parties closer together. Even Dean and Morris share each other's company without going for each other’s throats, although that takes a few days. 

Dean had said, while watching Morris paddling freely on his back in the half built reservoir, bathing in the sun, “Let me tell you something, John Morris. You’re one goddamn arrogant asshole,” and Morris had replied, “Let me tell you something, Dean Winchester. I don’t care what you think. That is to say, if you think,” and Sam could hear Morris laughing from all the way downstream. They had been amicable from then on out. 

They share stories and a bottle of whiskey, passing it down the line as they sit on a protruding rock with bare feet cooling in the stream below. Dean lays on his back, enamoured with the sun, his eyes closed against it. 

Sam’s been doing a fairly reasonable job keeping himself in check around Warm and Morris, but he can’t help stare at his brother here, bathing in the warmth, all of them a little lightheaded with the alcohol. Dean stretching his arms overhead has revealed a strip of skin at his stomach, -shirt pulled from his pants- and Sam very badly wants to splay his fingers wide there. Sam compromises, with the side of his palm against Dean’s hip, sitting close enough for it to come across innocently.

When he looks up, he finds Warm watching him, and Sam’s heart beats fast with knowledge that it’s probably not a normal thing for someone to stare at their sibling with such earnest endearment. Warm is the sort of person that can read strangers like children’s books, with big bold lettering and huge coloured pictures to drive the message home. Morris himself had said that Warm had sat him down once and told him all the truths about himself, like he had known them since the very first day they had met, ones that he himself had yet to dissect of his own accord.

Warm is perceptive, intuitive, and possibly a bona fide genius. Warm smiles at Sam like he knows. 

Sam bends down to scoop a handful of water, brings it back up and slaps his brother’s stomach with it in some sort of desperate display of brotherhood. The spray ricochets and they’re all caught in the crossfire. 

Dean pushes him in the river. 

\---

The prospecting has to be done in the dark, so that the gold can light up effectively. Warm announces over breakfast on the third day that they will go ahead that night. The dam was just about prepared, and the burnt skin at Warm and Morris’ legs had healed into scabs, hardly itching anymore. It would not be an issue to grease over, however Sam still rubs at his own nervously when he thinks about it. 

Dean and Morris are cutting a felled tree into manageable pieces, turning it into a competition, and Warm and Sam take what they can hold and wade into the river to finish the last of their preparations. 

Sam breaks a branch in half over his knee, asks Warm the question he’s had on his mind for days, “How did you come about this formula?” 

Warm seems to find it funny, smiles at the question, “My father had been an inventor. Nothing spectacular. Pocket watches with impossibly tiny mechanics. I inherited his steady hand.” Warm jams a particularly wide branch into the gap the stones had created, blocking the stream. “I had been a drunk - the kind you see sleeping in pig pens, walking the streets covered in all kinds of filth.”

“I can’t picture that,” Sam says, truthfully. Warm has come across more put together than even Morris, perhaps. Had to be, to pitch such an unbelievable idea. “Our father struggled with alcohol, Dean sometimes, too.” 

Warm looks sympathetic, but continues. “I woke up one morning in the militia, with no memory of how I had come to get there or even how I had managed to enlist. Perhaps someone had taken pity, drugged me and left me at the gates so I would clean myself up. Perhaps it had just been my own drunk self that had walked there with that same intention. Either way, I did recover. Served in the barracks for six months. I met a man named Briggs that played with concoctions in his tiny cell of a room.” 

“In the militia?”

“Between drills and lunch,” Warm laughed. “It was a hobby. He was a chemist, and I was so intrigued, I begged him to teach me. I read all the books he had on his shelves, watched him combine substances that should never be mixed, and learnt what I could. The gold-finding idea hit me not long after, I may have fallen out of my chair when it did.”

“Did you tell Briggs?” 

“I did not, I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust him.” Warm purses his lips. “I’ve become a very distrusting person since, it's a heavy weight to carry, Sam.” 

“But you trust Morris?” 

“I trust John very much.” Warm smiles, looking over at where Dean and Morris were comparing their freshly chopped piles. “I left the militia, usually it is not that easy - they kill men that try to escape. As it turned out, I never actually enrolled, I had just strolled in, I never signed my name on anything.” 

Sam laughs at that, and Warm joins in at his own expense.

“What about you? How did you end up here?” Warm asks, after a small comfortable lapse in conversation. 

Sam halts his branch arranging for a moment, standing straight to consider the question. He looks over at Dean, not particularly seeing, just for comfort’s sake. Sam splashes his face with cold water. “It’s a long story.” 

Warm doesn’t push, but stands too, re-rolling his sleeves back to his elbows, ready to listen if it was something he wanted to share. Sam doesn’t feel obliged, and knows Warm is not the kind of person to believe he is owed a story from Sam just because he had spoken of his own. 

Besides Bobby, and a few of their father’s connections -all of whom were double Sam’s age- they have never really had anyone Sam could call true friends. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t think he’s enjoyed the conversation and company of someone of a similar age that wasn’t his brother in years. Or maybe never. 

“Our mother died when I was a baby,” Sam starts, going back to his job for something to do with his hands. Warm smiles, pleased and does the same. “There was a fire. Dean was four at the time, he remembers more than I do. Our father moved us around a lot after the house burnt. He took odd jobs to keep us fed, mostly bounty hunting. Dean and I would be left in houses he had cleared out himself, and Dad would be off on another job before the bodies had even been disposed of.” 

“That work is something you’ve always known then?” 

“Just about. Dad sparked the Winchester name. He never worked under the Commodore but he might have, eventually.”

“What happened to him?”

Sam hesitates for a pregnant moment, swallows and tells Warm the truth. “Dean killed him.” 

If Warm is surprised by that, he doesn’t show it. Sam continues. 

“Our father was angry, all the time. He drilled this life into us from the moment we were old enough to hold the weight of a gun. The family business, and all that. The times he was home, and when we were old enough to travel with him on jobs, it was hell.” Sam sighs, not used to speaking so openly about his own history. 

It’s something that they have both struggled to recover from, Dean more so than Sam. They carry both physical and mental scars from their formative years and Sam thinks the longer they continue to do their father’s work, the longer it will take for them to stop aching. 

Warm’s looking at him, patiently waiting for Sam to continue. Sam can feel his fingers going pruney in the water. Dean and Morris have retired for the afternoon, and Sam can hear the clink of metal bowls by their camp. 

“Dad had come at me with an axe, he was the drunkest I’d ever seen. I had said something he had not agreed with. I don’t remember what it was, I said a lot to anger him on purpose. Maybe I was provoking, hoping it would come to a pinnacle point and something might change.” Sam smiles a little to himself, he had fondness in his heart for his former self. So full of angst and teenage rebellion and love for his brother. “Dean had pried the axe out of his hands and drove it into his side.”

Dean with blood on his hands, telling Sam to stay at the house, please, Sammy stay here. Dean, with tears tracks painted wet down his cheeks at what he had done. Sam thinks about his dream. The wet sound of splitting bone and muscle and sinew, hacking limbs into manageable pieces to haul and bury, not just their father, but everyone they had ever killed. 

Warm doesn’t say anything immediately, like he is struggling to pick out the right words. Sam gestures for them to walk back towards the camp and out of the river, it’s beginning to get dark. 

“Do you regret what happened?” Warm asks, squeezing the water from his trousers on the bank. 

“In ways. He was still our father,” Sam says, and then quieter, “Dean was never the same after.” 

“It’s a wondrous thing, Sam,” Warm says, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder and smiling with his eyes. “How much you two care for each other. I’ve seen it in you both, and it’s blinding. As long as you are together, things will work out. I believe in it.” 

Warm leaves Sam standing on the bank processing. He feels lighter, a little wobbly, like he had just emptied out something dark and possessive that he’d been keeping in long enough to start rotting. He repeats Warm’s words in his head like a prayer. 

“Do you think the sky is dark enough yet, John?” 

“Give us another minute, Herrmann, the idiot has backed himself into a corner and I’m closing in for the kill,” Morris calls back from inside the tent. 

“Oh keep dreaming, asshole,” says Dean. 

Warm pulls back the entrance of the tent to expose Morris and Dean sitting cross legged on the ground playing cards. 

\---

The night is warm, the river cool, and the thick metal barrels sit out on the banks with open lids, primed and ready. 

Morris soaps up the warm water in front of the fire, prepared for them to wash their legs when they need to. Sam feels the nervous energy in the air. Dean hands him the grease, and they slather their skin for protection. He wonders if one day, Warm will be able to find a less hazardous way to use the formula. 

“Sam and Dean, you’ll take the first barrel and pour it into the middle of the river. Morris and I will agitate the water while you do, and when I say stop pouring, you must stop pouring. It should be no more than two barrels. Understand?” 

Both Sam and Dean nod. Rolling up their pant legs to above knee, tight in case they are to slide down mid event. 

“As soon as it starts burning, you wash off,” Warm looks to Morris, who still has purplish bruising and dried flakey skin at his legs, not completely healed but no longer painful. “The light will only last around twenty-five minutes, we need to work fast.”

Morris follows Warm into their man-made dam, all the way to the middle, water reaching upper thigh. 

The formula is a black-silver in the light of the moon, thick and so sharp smelling that Sam just about feels his nose hairs singe from it, his eyes watering from breathing it in. Dean coughs, retches a little from it. Sam says, “C’mon, let’s go see if this works.” 

They waddle into the river, the barrel and all its thick materials weighs more than Sam expected, and they struggle to move it, side-stepping with quick feet. Once they reach the middle, Warm tells them to pour and they tip it the best they can, walking backwards so it spreads in one thick black line. 

Nothing happens immediately, Warm and Morris swirl the water around, diluting it. First with wooden poles, then with their hands as it is safe to do so. Sam and Dean dump the empty barrel in the shallows and run to fetch the second. 

Sam’s nervousness has doubled, jitters in his stomach with the stress and the danger of the situation. His hands shake around the barrel as they lift it and make their way back into the water again. 

Dean must be feeling it too, woozy with the smell of the liquid so close. They stumble knee deep in the river and the barrel slips from Dean’s grip, angles badly and oozes over his brother’s right hand, covering it in black sludge as he tries to regrip the container. 

Sam drops the barrel completely when Dean does, letting it roll into the water and float out by itself. Dean doesn’t yell or scream or cry or let out any noise of pain. His eyes are wide with shock as Sam grabs at him frantically. Dean is clawing at his arm, breathing in tiny inhales, panicked. Warm says something but Sam can’t hear anything except his brother’s distraught breathing and his own heartbeat in his ears. 

They’ve always been familiar with pain, broken ribs since the day Sam was old enough to snap back at their father. Deep breaths, try to focus on something else. Dean is doing neither of these things despite knowing better. Sam can see his skin bubbling, like it is alive.

Sam tugs at his shirt and hauls him out of the river, Dean tripping over his own feet. “We can wash it off, it’ll be okay, Dean. It’ll be okay.” Sam stammers, pouring warm water over Dean’s hand shakily, before giving up when the formula doesn’t come immediately free, resorting to dunking it straight in the bucket of soap. 

It’s hard to see anything in the dull orange of the fire, but he thinks it’s clean of black when he pulls it out again. Sam’s at a loss of what to do. Dean’s other hand is bleeding where he has dug his fingernails into his own palm. 

“Hurry up you two!” Morris yells, not realising the severity of the incident, and Sam’s attention is drawn back to the river for a second, the bed of which is starting to omit a glow. 

“I can still work,” Dean says, calming down a little once his focus is on the river of fortune and not on his burnt hand. 

“I can do it, Dean, I’ll do it, we’ll still make enough.” Sam says, holding his non-injured arm in a vice. Can not stomach the thought of Dean hurting any other parts of himself. 

“No, I can hold a bucket.” Dean stands defiantly, and goes transfixed towards the radiance.

Sam wades into the water after Dean, the bottom now glowing so brightly it’s hard to look at directly. Tiny pinpricks of gold like stars, rippled in the water. The whole river reflects the sky with a galaxy of its own. 

Morris comes out the water to wash himself off, a bucket half full already with gold pieces and stone, marbled in bright swirls. He laughs as he goes, which in turn makes Warm laugh, which in turn makes Dean laugh, which in turn makes Sam laugh. Perhaps they are all hysterical from the fumes. 

Dean smiles at Sam, overwhelmed with the impossibility of what they are witnessing, his pain is forgotten. Sam sees a future as bright as the gold under their bare feet.

\---

The following day is not as kind to them. 

Dean is feverish overnight, kicking Sam and whimpering in his sleep, tearing his shirt over his head and cradling his injured hand to his chest when the material touches the skin. He sticks to Sam, sweaty on their shared mat. Sam does his best to not chew through his own lip with worry, brushing Dean’s hair from his head. He doesn’t sleep.

Morris and Warm are sympathetic to Dean’s situation. Warm, profusely so, taking the blame hard himself despite the number of times Sam repeats that what had happened is not Warm’s fault. 

Warm himself had spent too long in the water, blisters over bruises, hardly able to walk, and Morris is only in a slightly better state. Sam’s legs itch, red with scratching but there is no broken skin. 

Dean spends the morning sweating under a blanket in the tent while Sam, Morris and Warm discuss a course of action. 

“If Dean’s condition does not improve within the next day I’d suggest you see a doctor,” Morris says, somberly. “We must travel back to San Francisco to settle some debts, you are more than welcome to come with us.” 

Sam stares at his breakfast, feeling nauseous. 

Everything in him is yelling _no_ ; that the city would only provide more misfortune for them, as it had once already. Caring for his brother feels like a responsibility only he is suited for, that it has only ever been them on the road. He thinks -not for the first time- that they are cursed, and that anyone that befriends them will also suffer as they have. It would be wise if they were to go their own ways, as Warm and Morris deserve only long, prosperous lives. It’s the least Sam can do.

Warm notices the hesitation in Sam’s lack of response. His lack of any real substantial conversation since Dean had refused to move from bed. “I know of a reputable doctor back in Jacksonville. However, I do not know if it would be wise to wait for Dean’s condition to improve, as if it were to decline further, the journey would only take more strength from him.” 

“We should leave now then,” Sam says. It’s around a day and a half ride from the river to back north, slower going if he has to stop to tend to Dean. Sam feels like he’s going out of his skin, not being able to do anything to help.

Morris looks to Warm before replying, Sam feels their pity and wants none of it. “We can help you pack up. You can take our food supplies, we won’t need them in the city.” 

Sam doesn’t say anything, scrapes his eggs into the fire. Warm stands and squeezes his shoulder as he passes to start the process of taking down camp. 

The gesture doesn’t rid him of the dread he feels.

\---

They part ways mid afternoon. It’s a depressing ordeal. Dean is awake enough to say his goodbyes, shaking their hands with his non-injured one. 

“Keep in touch, please,” Morris says, sliding a note in his saddlebag as Sam sits himself onto his saddle. “Our business plans, you’ll be able to reach us in Texas, if all goes well.” 

“I have put what you made from the river with your other funds, it’s double what you actually pulled. Use it to take care of yourselves,” adds Warm. 

Sam smiles, still not entirely sure they deserve their kindness, but thanks them vehemently, truly grateful for it regardless. 

Warm and Morris go east and Sam and Dean go north. He knows better than to hold on to the hope that they will meet again. 

Dean’s condition, as they had expected, only worsens with the ride. 

Sam rewraps his hand thrice daily, the bubbled skin weeping as it tries to heal itself, the material of the cloth wrap sticking to it and leaving the material bloody and wet. Dean purposely looks away when he does, holding his breath and clenching his jaw. Sam figures it’s a mix of pain and not wanting to face the severity of it. 

Dean tips the bottom of his bottle of brandy to the sky and spends the rest of their journey drunk, in and out of consciousness and plastered against Sam’s back. He breathes shallowly at the juncture of Sam’s neck, his face burning hot against Sam’s skin. Sam keeps Dean’s good arm around his torso like Dean had held him the time Sam was ill from the spider-bite. It feels like an age has passed. Dean’s fist curls in the shirt at Sam’s stomach. 

“It’s my shooting hand, Sammy,” Dean mumbles into Sam’s neck, rain falling in thin blankets through the canopy of trees overhead. 

“Your left is still faster than most men’s right.” 

“Most isn’t all.” 

\---

Dean loses his arm below the elbow in Jacksonville. 

It is infected, skin starting to turn unsightly shades under the bandage. It cannot be saved. 

Sam holds Dean’s uninjured hand and looks defiantly at the whirls in the wood of the closest wall, breathing shallowly through his mouth so he doesn’t smell the blood. The sound of sawing bone however, is impossible to drown out. The macabre _shhk shhk_ and the intensity at which the doctor moves back and forth in Sam’s peripheral vision brings bile burning to the back of his throat; he’s never been so happy to see Dean unconscious. 

The doctor wears a rose pinned to his lapel that reminds Sam of their hotel room in San Francisco. Sam tries desperately to remember the details. How Dean’s hands had felt spread wide across his chest, big and solid and encompassing. How they had laid back and let the cool breeze from the open balcony windows cool their skin, Dean with the back of his arm laid over Sam’s throat where it fell. Sam had kissed his fingertips and Dean had pulled away in horror, feigned disgust, his ears pink and skin flushed. Sam tries to remember the smell of roses and the fresh bite of the night air. 

There’s a _thunk_ as Dean’s hand falls into the metal bucket at the side of the table, and Sam retches violently before throwing up into his own.

Dean doesn’t wake for hours. The doctor has wrapped his wound in thick medical bandages, with the instruction that they must be changed and washed twice a day, more so depending on how much he bleeds. He tells Sam it will be a slow recovery.

Sam sits in the wooden chair in reach of the table, his head resting forward on his arms because he can't bear to look at Dean lying pale and unconscious like he’s dead. Dean’s torso is a warm solid point at the crown of his head, grounding and infallible proof that things will be okay. Sam feels sick with exhaustion, his stomach rolling with nausea and fear. 

He doesn’t know what to do. They’ll have no choice but to stay put somewhere until Dean is well again. He had wanted them to settle down, but it was always something he had imagined being voluntary, with preparation and care and time taken to consider the long-term. Not Dean thrust into a sick-bed unwillingly. 

Sam doesn’t know what kind of person Dean will be when they leave. 

He falls asleep there, and is woken vigorously by the doctor as the sun sets in thick orange blocks through the windows. 

“Men, outside, asking about you and your brother.” 

“Who?” Sam asks, standing immediately, going to the window to peer out the sheer curtains.

“I don’t know, there are three of them.”

They are the Commodore’s men. Sam recognises them as well as he had Morris from a distance. Blue blazers and well maintained weaponry. His heart leaps in his throat and he curses himself for ever underestimating how seriously the man took loyalty. 

“Is there a backdoor?” Sam whispers, hurriedly reaching for Dean, hands on either side of his face, trying to rouse him so that they can run. They have to run. 

The doctor nods, helps Sam try to sit Dean up. His brother wakes with a start, dazed and frightened, scanning the room. He goes to grab at Sam’s arm with his amputated hand, and misses, eyes widening as he puts together what has happened while he has been asleep. 

“We gotta go, Dean.” 

“Sam,” Dean says, voice croaky with disuse, his fingertips bruise where they are dug into Sam’s shoulder. Dean looks directly at him in a state of shock. 

Sam smiles the best he can, prays it comes across as soothing as he intends it. He tries not to let his hands shake as he runs a thumb over Dean’s cheek once, before getting a hand around Dean’s back, pulling him down from the table to stand on trembling legs.

“We’ll be alright. We’ll be alright,” Sam repeats like a mantra, praying that the words Warm had spoken to him at the claim were prophetic. They were still together, they would work it out. 

\---

They push north, and the Commodore’s men refuse to be shaken. More than just the three from Jacksonville now, a handful, maybe five from the lanterns Sam can count in the night. 

Sam’s horse breathes hard under him, Dean’s own, foaming white saliva where the bit sits in her mouth. They’ve been riding through midnight, weaving and trying to throw the men off their trail. It’s been a fruitless effort. They’ve managed to put enough space between them to afford breaks every hour or so, but it's no more than a few minutes to catch their breath and check that Dean is still upright on his horse. 

“I didn’t think he would send men,” Sam says, leaning forward to take the weight off his legs. He speaks mostly to himself. Dean hasn’t offered him much besides, _‘Sam’_ , ‘ _who?’_ and ‘ _fuck’_. 

“Maybe our letter from San Francisco was late to arrive,” he continues, chewing at his lip as the tiny bodiless lantern lights in the distance get ever closer. More likely, the Commodore had just seen through their bullshit.

By sun-up, Sam’s legs are stiff from being in the saddle, they ache like he’s been shot, huge jolts of pain through his thighs. Dean has sat back in the more comfortable position behind him, so he can rest, not having to relearn how to ride a horse without a dominant hand, and so Sam doesn’t pull a muscle in his neck turning to check he’s still beside him. They swap horses once every hour so they don’t ride them into the ground. 

“Dean, we’re going to have to take them.” 

“I can’t -” Dean starts, not able to finish.

Sam knows. “I’ll do it, I got his one.”

They pull up behind a huge, curving rock formation, large enough for their horses to get behind without being spotted, and positioned on a rise so that they can see the road from above. Dean sits with his back against it, his revolver held between his chest and what’s left of his arm, trying to load rounds into the chambers with his left hand and fumbling, swearing, frustrated and upset with himself. 

Sam puts the rifle against his cheek and holds his breath. 

He takes out the front two in quick succession. They drop hard and cause the others to split off to the side in order not to trample them. Sam can hear them yelling, taking cover behind a smaller rocky outcrop. Sam pulls his head in as a shot flies over his head, another hitting their cover, sending dust and shards down over Dean who is flicking his chamber closed and trying to get the grip in his hand, desperate to help. 

Dean misses his first two shots. He swears loudly, irritated. It’s hard to watch. Dean has been able to hit a target between the eyes from half a mile away since the day he turned twelve; has always been a better shot than Sam. 

These men are hired professionals, and Dean is still sweating out the remnants of fever, mouth twisted in pain and exhausted from riding. Sam couldn’t think of more extreme circumstances if he tried. 

Sam takes out his third, and Dean growls, wildly, watching his own shot ricochet inches from where it needs to be. Sam’s concerned he’s going to do something suicidal in the search for proof that he still has value. 

“Hey, calm down.”

“Fuck off,” Dean says, and then, “cover me.” 

“Dean!” 

Sam shoots blindly in the general direction of the men, watching his brother run crouched in the grass towards them. Sam swears and follows behind, not about to leave Dean alone. Sam takes out the second last when he pops his head from cover to their right. 

Dean disappears behind the rock, a final shot sounding from where Sam can’t see. Sam’s heart leaps into his throat, and imagines turning the corner to find his brother with a hole in his gut, staining the dry grass red. Sam feels dread burn hotly through him, panic pricking up the back of his spine.

Sam rounds the rock with his gun up, finds Dean kneeled over the man’s waist, left hand wet with blood. The empty shirt sleeve has come unpinned and the cuff is flecked red where it hangs limply from Dean’s side. The man has a knife, and five stab wounds in his chest, groans wetly, air whooshing from where it shouldn’t be as Dean pulls the knife out. He dies horribly.

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam says, taking the knife from his brother’s hand, feeling the blood warm in his palm, pulls Dean up by the elbow.

Dean shakes him off, but stumbles when he stands alone, regrabs Sam for balance. “There’ll be more. He won’t stop.” 

So they keep running. 

\---

Sam cuts Dean’s hair under the moonlight, too anxious to start a fire. It had grown long enough to get into his eyes. 

He snips it short, how Dean likes it. The scissors haven’t gotten any bigger and he strains to see in the limited light. 

“Morris and Warm…” Dean says quietly. “They must have men after them too.”

Sam pauses his work with the thought, hands buried in Dean’s long hair. He ruffles it, removing the loose strands. 

“They are smart enough to take care of themselves. Morris knows how the Commodore operates.” Sam’s not sure he believes his own words. 

Dean’s quiet while Sam finishes up, scooting around to sit facing so he can get at the front. Dean keeps his head down, despondent and small. Sam hates it, the mood oppressive and bleak, this quiet, unassertive side of Dean that Sam’s not used to seeing. 

Sam rises on his knees and brushes the hair from where it’s fallen on the back of Dean’s neck, shakes out his shirt. Dean tips his head forward and presses his forehead to Sam’s sternum, winds his arm around Sam’s back and holds him there. 

“We have to kill the Commodore,” Dean says, muffled against Sam’s shirt. 

An opportunity for freedom, for both parties. All their problems neatly tied up in one bloody bow. It’s the least they can do for Morris and Warm, and it would mean the end of this work for them. The end of this chapter of their lives. Revenge, for this cursed job. Sam thinks about how good the Commodore’s office would look with a little blood and viscera added to the walls. 

“Yeah,” Sam says. 

They had been heading north anyway, veering a little to try and confuse their trail but still in the general direction of Oregon City. Maybe he had known it this entire time; an inevitable outcome. 

Sam’s shirt is wet when Dean eventually lets him go. 

He rewraps Dean’s bandage, instructing him to keep his arm out to the side. It’s bruised badly, the skin pulled together with waxed sutures at the stump. Dean still refuses to look, keeps his gaze trained strictly to the front while Sam works. 

Sam pulls his arm back through the sleeve, folds and repins the unnecessary length of it back to itself, hands Dean a blanket and an almost stale biscuit to pick at, instructs him to sleep, and feels terribly shaken by how dramatically their dynamic has flipped. 

\---

Oregon City is not how they left it. 

There’s a quietness about the air, hesitance. The streets are just about desolate, and the entrance to the town hall has black curtains draped from it. 

Sam looks at Dean in disbelief from where they stand side by side in the shadow of the building. They holster their guns and walk over the threshold. 

The Commodore’s office has been dressed. Flowers sit on every available surface, the room lit dully by candles, blinds closed to the light of day. Two men stand by an open casket and inside, the man himself lay dead. 

“Fuck,” Dean says, eloquently. 

One of the guards says, “Heart attack, died in the bath, we’re very sorry for your loss,” and Sam almost laughs. It’s such an unspectacular way to go out. No glory, no honour; it’s a nothing death, and nothing will be written of it. This is better than anything Sam could have hoped for. 

“You must be disappointed,” Dean says to Sam, not bothering to quieten his voice. Sam tries and fails to keep from smiling, bites his tongue. The man opposite the casket looks between them concerned. 

“Yeah. Kinda,” Sam replies, the anxiety in the lead up, their assault preparation, the image of the Commodore slumped and bleeding onto the paperwork on his desk, all fizzled out. 

“Sirs, I think no one else may be coming.”

Dean snorts, and turns around to keep from laughing. 

“May we close the casket?” 

“Please,” Sam says, and follows his brother back outside. 

The relief is such a palpable thing. Sam turns his head to the sky and breathes deeply for what feels like the first time in years. He keeps expecting to feel short-changed, cheated, but it never comes. 

Dean pokes him in the ribs and says, “C’mon, let’s go get a drink.” 

Sam writes a letter to Warm, sitting on the same table they had the day that Dean had first spoken that name. He smokes a cigarette leant back against the wall, not bothering to pretend he isn’t watching Sam. 

Sam writes them news of the Commodore, of the fate of Dean’s hand, wishes them the best, and scribbles down a return address in the margin.

\---

It takes a week to get to Bobby’s.

It’s an obvious choice. Dean needs someplace to heal, someplace to strengthen and relearn with his left. Sam needs someplace to lay his head for more than one night at a time. Someplace to discuss their future.

Bobby shoots a warning shot before he realises who it is.

Sam yells, reining in his horse, who had spooked from the noise, “Christ, Bobby, it’s us! It’s Sam and Dean!” 

Bobby tentatively lowers his shotgun, and walks down the front steps to greet them. 

“You two look like shit,” he says, and pulls them both into a hug. 

They stay for a month. Bobby gives them the room above the barn, in the hayloft where they would sleep when they were kids after John would pawn them off. It smells distinctively of grass and cows, but the morning light from between the wooden beams paints Dean’s skin in a striped glow and he sleeps without a hand on his gun for the first time in years. 

Dean’s recovery is an unsteady thing, and Sam doesn’t put a timer on it. To lose a part of oneself is unimaginable to him. Dean’s autonomy has been stripped back to the bare bones, and asking for help with tasks he hadn’t even needed to think about in the past is something he struggles with immensely. Embarrassed and ashamed, he’s a short fuse, sometimes snapping at Sam for even offering.

Other times, he milks it for all it’s worth.

“No, lower, lower. There, _yeah_. That’s it.” 

Sam scowls and scrubs the bar of soap into his brother’s back. Dean’s leant forward between Sam’s legs, the water in the bath warm enough to turn their skin pink up to their chests. 

“You know they charge for this in some places.” Sam rolls his eyes.

“Yeah? What’s your hourly rate, sweetheart?” Dean lets his voice drawl for effect. 

“You couldn’t afford me.” 

Dean leans back into Sam’s chest and Sam abandons the soap somewhere at the bottom of the tub. His arms wrap around Dean’s stomach of their own accord, skin sliding in the water, kisses down the side of Dean’s neck. 

“I dunno, it just so happens I have come into a large sum of money,” his brother says, tilting his head to give Sam better access.

“Oh yeah?” 

“Y- yeah,” Dean stumbles when Sam grazes his teeth, he sucks a bruise at the junction where his shoulder meets. “Sam.” 

Sam hums, teases his hand lower under the water, still holding Dean against his chest. Dean lets his head fall back on Sam’s shoulder when Sam gets a hand around him, hard and twitching in his palm. 

Dean’s breath hitches, “Sam.” 

“Yeah, Dean.” Call and response.

Dean’s stomach tenses under Sam’s hand, his hips jerking when Sam runs his thumb over the head. Dean says, in a shaky voice, “I was scared you might not want me, after -” 

It’s the stupidest thing he has ever said, and Dean’s said a lot of stupid things. He can’t imagine a world where he would not want this. Dean could sprout a second head, another ten toes and Sam would love him with the same amount of stubborn dedication.

“You’re still my brother.”

A letter arrives for them in Morris’ familiar professional tone. He and Warm are well, they have settled near Dallas and their business endeavours seem to be proving fruitful. Sam is just grateful that they are alive.  
  
They take time at their own pace. Sam helps with farm work every other day, but Bobby doesn’t push it. Dean works on jobs around the house, fixes the warped floorboards and replaces the outside panels. They play cards on the floor in front of the fire in the evenings and spend the nights wrapped up in each other amongst the hay. 

Dean uses cans lined up on the back fence as target practise and Sam watches him with a book in his lap, lounged on the porch in the sun. By the time a month passes, he can’t recognise the difference in speed between what Dean’s right hand had been and what his left is now.

They go riding when Dean gets itchy from staying still long, or when Bobby kicks them out of the house for getting under his feet. Sometimes they ride with no goal, just to feel the wind in their hair and the ground thunder under hooves. Other times they head down to the river at the back end of Bobby’s land. They spend evenings floating leisurely, paddling back upstream when the tide takes them too far, eat homemade biscuits and homegrown fruit on the grassy bank. 

It’s a kind of happiness that Sam had never thought possible. 

They’re sitting under the stars one night, a campfire between them, drunk and merry on half a bottle of whiskey. 

“Hey, Bobby, is there a sales office in town?” Dean asks, but looks at Sam when he says it, smiles at him that gentle way he reserves for his brother alone; the way that warms Sam to the very core, a slow spread like thick poison.

Dean says, “I think we need to see about some land of our own.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was partly inspired by [On the Dodge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/206902?view_adult=true) by Candle_Beck, which is a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wincest retelling. It's tragic, and beautiful and I think they might have invented love. 
> 
> As a side note: Jake Gyllenhaal plays John Morris in The Sisters Brothers movie, which should be all the motivation you need to watch it if you haven't already. He really has a penchant for playing gay cowboys, huh?
> 
> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/cowboywincest) and [Tumblr!](https://cowboywincest.tumblr.com/)


End file.
